


Bequeathed from Pale Estates

by Author376



Series: Acquaint the Flesh [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: All the Direwolves - Freeform, Consensual Underage Sex, F/M, Female Jon Snow, It's Westeros so you know what to expect, PLAGUES, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Gods will Screw Up Your Sex Life, don't trust them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 433,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Author376/pseuds/Author376
Summary: In a Westeros where Soulmates are bound and Marked by the Gods to bind Houses together and pay blood debts, Lyarra Snow and Oberyn Martell are about to get a shock...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Madrigal_in_training](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madrigal_in_training/gifts).



> First off, let me state that I would never have gotten this written at all without the help of Madrigal-in-training. She deserves at least as much credit as me for encouraging me to write it, then whipping the story into shape as a beta reader.
> 
> Warnings: I don't use archive warnings, but you'll always see them in the notes at the beginning of each chapter. I'll try to think of anything that might trigger someone, so please let me know if I miss something and I will add it as quickly as possible.
> 
> For this chapter be aware that:
> 
> Lyarra is only 14 at the beginning of this story. Oberyn is a grown man nearing forty. They will end up in a relationship and if that bothers you, this will not be the story for you.
> 
> Soulmates and Soul-marks in fiction aren't kind where consent is concerned. This fic will deal with the fact that neither party, especially Oberyn, wants to deal with the constraint the Mark puts on his sex life and his sexual preferences. There romance is a slow burn. 
> 
> This story is very, very AU. It includes things like Jon Snow being female, a plague, and many other canon divergences including different characters dying (or living) at different times and doing different things.
> 
> I think that's about it! Thank you for clicking the link and reading!

**Chapter 1 - 297 A.C.**

 It was sleeting in the Wolfswood.

 A low, mournful frozen mist wasn't so much falling from the sky as merely slowly gliding downward to soak the mosses and lichen clinging to the rocks and braken of the forest floor and dust the needles of the evergreens with a persistent frost. By midday it would turn into a heavy, aggressive, cold rain but at that moment it was merely an icy drizzle that was assaulting the cloaks of the five figures moving methodically through the underbrush. None of them paid the weather much attention though, for what was a little sleet to a Northerner?

"Bloody, damn annoying," Fat Tom muttered in aggravation.

 Lyarra Snow bit her tongue as she exchanged a look with Robb through the spindly branches of a stunted hawthorn shrub. There were times when being a bastard was a blessing and they usually came when being a woman was a curse. In this case, Lady Stark wouldn't allow either of her daughters out in such foul weather for such a flimsy reason as checking over the traps that Bran was being taught to set. Lyarra was not her daughter, however and Lord Stark thought it a fine thing that Lyarra wished to go with her elder and younger brothers while Robb taught Bran about the traditions of their people.

 "Brandon taught me to set traps much the same way and your Uncle Benjen afterward." Lord Stark had smiled, before his storm-gray eyes grew mournful with the thought of his murdered siblings. "Your Aunt Lyanna went as well. I see no harm in you doing the same, Lyarra. My grandmother was a Flint, from the mountains and she's the one who taught Brandon."

 Lyanna Stark was entirely too much of a specter in Lyarra's life for her to want to dwell on her aunt. She knew her resemblance to the girl whose kidnapping and rape at the hands of Prince Rhaegar had toppled a dynasty and left her own family in bloody and burnt tatters was… exceptional. Everyone in Winterfell who'd been alive in the days that Lyanna Stark had been a wild presence in the castle said so but Lyanna had never cared for the comparisons. Her aunt had been a Stark, through and through, and Lyarra would never have that honor. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't hard to connect her beloved aunt's death with the pained looks her father gave her; it certainly wasn't her mother he was seeing in his bastard's face. Everyone always said that, it mattered not who Ned Stark's illicit love had been because she hadn't contributed anything to her daughter's makeup.

 "Watch your step, Tom!" Robb called out over his shoulder after casting her a blue-eyed wink.

 Without fail, Fat Tom promptly came to attention at the concerned call from his liege lord's heir. It mattered not that the concern was for him; it was an automatic response. It was also an unfortunate one given that the man's bulk and the slick rocks they were all walking across meant that fast movements were unwise. Fat Tom's weight shifted and there was nothing he could do to prevent his feet sliding out from underneath him. The guard fell to the damp, chill ground in a great clattering of chainmail, boiled leather and the jangling of his mail coif.

 "Are you alright?" Bran called out, concerned, from where he stood by Mad Garth.

 Mad Garth was one of Winterfell's younger guards. He'd only just reached at nine-and-ten years and his face was still fresh and youthful beneath the gray ringmail of his coif. He was a quiet, serious young man who had two younger sisters in the laundry, whose care was entirely his own due to a fire at his parents' cottage in Wintertown. Given that he talked little, barley smiled and seemed the furthest thing from mad of any man she'd seen, Lyarra couldn't help but be curious about how he had come by the name.

 "You found it!" Lyarra grinned, her breath puffing in the air.

 Bran gave her a bright smile in response and nodded as he lifted his prize into the air. It was a large hare, its fur a patchy grayish-brown but its size considerable. Lyarra happily noted that rabbit stew would likely be on the menu in short order and it was a favorite of Rickon's. Perhaps it would convince the baby of the Stark Clan to have a little pity on them at dinner this evening. For the last three days Rickon had been so ornery about eating his vegetables that, by the time they'd passed the toddler from lap to lap around the family to get him to eat his share, all of his siblings' dinner had grown cold.

 "Well done, Bran!" Robb worked his way out of the bushes and helped Fat Tom to his feet, careful of the line of animals hanging over his own shoulder as he helped Fat Tom up.

 Their combined traps had left them with a very nice haul. Lyarra had brought in a red fox and several fat squirrels with her traps, not to mention three marmots. Robb however, had exceeded them both and was carrying home two silver foxes, three hares, and a ptarmigan.

 Not that Lyarra was too surprised by this. The rule was that you had to make your own traps and Bran was only just learning how to construct them. Lyarra didn't have the time or easy access to the Wolfswood to devote herself to tracking and study where to set her snares most effectively. Robb, on the other hand, had the most freedom once his responsibilities had been discharged, though that in and of itself ate up most of his time.

 "I'll trade you the red fox and a new pair of gloves for your fox pelts." Lyarra offered after she and Robb had properly made over Bran's triumph at catching such a large hare with one of his first snares. They turned back to where Ilys, another guard, waited with their horses perhaps a quarter mile away, where the underbrush wasn't so thick.

 Her brother shot her a look and Lyarra smiled hopefully in his direction, summoning up the expression specifically because he'd been complaining that she never smiled anymore again earlier that morning. Robb bit his lip and looked down at the red fox she was carrying and at the silver-tipped, luxuriant, black fur of his own catch. Undoubtedly he was thinking that he didn't need to emphasize his own Tully coloring by wearing anything with red fox fur on it but Robb's mother had recently gifted him a fine new cloak as it was and the red fox's hide could be gifted to Lady Stark as a thank you and one she would definitely appreciate.

 "I've gloves enough." Robb replied and Lyarra rolled her eyes.

 Robb Stark lost his gloves constantly. She, the servants, Lady Stark, and their siblings were always finding his gloves left in some room in the castle and returning them to him. Every few months he ended up wearing odd, mismatched pairs because he'd creatively misplaced too many. Robb always needed more gloves and Lyarra made sure her expression said that they both knew this as clearly as possible.

 "Really." Robb narrowed his eyes back at her before grinning. "I'll trade them both for the red fox and that falcon carving you've got sitting on your table, waiting to be painted."

 Lyarra blinked and then narrowed her eyes. Robb grinned back at her openly. Finally she huffed out a breath and answered.

 "Fine but I'm not painting it." She relented. "It would take too long and painted it's worth more than two fox pelts."

 "I've three more matching pelts in my room." Robb replied, looking hopeful. "For them, I want it painted."

 "Deal." Lyarra quickly accepted, eagerly thinking of making herself a new cloak with the fox furs laid richly over the shoulders.

 She had the heavy black wool for it and she had plainer furs to line its length with. Winter had to be coming soon after a summer that had lasted pretty much the length of her life, and Lyarra wanted to be ready for it. Not to mention the fact that Lyarra's current daily use cloak was one she'd had for quite a while, merely lengthened by the addition of a thick strip of fabric and more rabbit fur across the bottom. There was nothing wrong with that cloak of course, but Lady Stark had sewn new cloaks for all of her children and Lyarra had reached the age where the Lady of Winterfell could justify no longer having her maids sew any clothing her her husband's bastard.

 "Your father is a good man and will see you as well married as can be expected." Lady Stark's words, spoken to her on her twelfth birthday, had not left Lyarra's mind since the cold conversation had frosted its way across Lady Stark's solar. "However, you are a bastard. Neither a firstborn son nor a lord will wed you and you will not be expected to run a large household, nor should you be so above your station as to wish for one. You needs must learn to measure, cut and sew your own dresses and balance a household budget frugally. Coddling you now will only make your tasks harder, Lyarra."

 "Is this where you come to look for rocks to color paint with?"

 "What?" Bran spoke up at that point, jarring Lyarra from her thoughts and turning her focus to explaining.

 "Oh, yes, Bran. I don't look for rocks though, at least not usually. There are a lot of plants and different kinds of earth and clay around the dry riverbed that I use to make my paints. I crush chalk for white paint if I can't get good white clay but I get the chalk from White Harbor. There are no deposits of chalk near Winterfell."

 Bran's interest in painting, carving or drawing was limited. His interest in almost everything else was very developed and Lyarra had no problem indulging her well-read younger brother by answering his questions about how she made her paints. She appreciated Winterfell's library as well, and it had been a safe haven to her many times over the years when visiting bannermen forced Lyarra out of the Great Hall, lest her existence embarrass Lady Stark more than usual or her bastardy offend their guests.

 The discussion of paints held Bran's attention all the way back to the horses, where Bran's love for his pony and riding overtook his need to know everything there was to know. Robb had become occupied discussing how guard rotations were managed with Fat Tom and Lyarra was almost relieved to hear the servant who met them at the stables tell Bran and Robb that their mother wished to speak with them. There were hours of daylight left and if she started painting that falcon now, then she wouldn't have to waste her candle allotment on it later. 

* * *

 Lyarra's room was in the family wing, down a side corridor and just a little removed from her father's trueborn children. It was a good room though, large and well-lit by windows overlooking the courtyard. Northern light poured in from them, illuminating the landscape of the airy space.

The room was rectangular with three large windows across one long wall, the lone door in one short wall and a large fireplace set opposite the well-fitted windows with their thick curtains and heavy shutters inside and out. A single large bed had begun its life with a large slab-like headboard and four thick, unornamented, square pillars supporting its heavy canopy. It was a simple bed no longer, though it had become a rather eccentric one thanks to the purely random way that its four posts had been covered in elaborate carvings in ever increasing skill.

 All people practiced carpentry but it was a skill especially prized in the North. Lyarra had begun whittling when she was little, simply because her father did it and whatever Robb was being taught by Lord Stark, Lyarra wanted to learn too. Robb had many responsibilities and a lack of interest in artistic past times. Lyarra though had loved to draw from the first moment a slate and stick of charcoal had been pressed into her hands by Maester Luwin and the old maester had been quick to notice and cultivate her skill. With only a certain amount of parchment allotted to Lyarra for her studies and her pleasure, Lyarra had soon started hoarding it and using it with great care. It was only natural that she shift to a material that was far more readily available and far cheaper in the North, like wood.

As such, the longer of the two tables lined up beneath the windows of her quarters featured tightly sealed jars of paint, powdered pigment in jars of its own, bottles of water, oil and other solvents and impeccably clean brushes standing bristles-up in a tall wooden cup carved to look like a tower half-tumbled down. Neat stacks and rolls of parchment were held in place by a small army of wood carvings.

 Looking out of place amidst the deleterious of an industrious life was a sturdy white glazed pitcher filled with snowdrops, blue moss-creepers, star ferns and other flowers. Lyarra had to smile at it, as she recognized her father's handiwork. Ned Stark might have been too busy to see his natural born child today but he'd made time to let her know he was still thinking of her.

 The carvings ran the gamut from practical and complete (a range of polished and oiled bowls and spoons waiting to make their way down to the kitchen), to fanciful and unfinished. Robb's falcon was the later. Carved from pale ash as tall as a man's arm from elbow to fingertips, the fierce bird appeared to be perched on a little spire of rock with its wings mantled over its head against the rain. Lyarra had been particularly proud of that piece, because you could almost see its feathers ruffling in the wind and she'd included tiny little globes in the carving that she would paint as water beaded on its feathers.

 There were two large cloths presses pushed against the wall furthest from the door and next to a large screen. Lyarra had carved the lid of her chest with a direwolf bringing down a stag. The deep polish on the dark wood of the chest made the knotwork and sinuous shapes and designs on the chest's corners and sides stand out hauntingly. The other chest was made of a warm, red-gold maple and Lyarra had carved as sleeping lioness into its lid; it had been the first time she'd gifted someone outside her family with any of her carvings. Theon, though there longer, had been gifted with the second: an ironwood cracken the size of a walnut that she knew he carried with him as a good luck charm.

 Lyarra wasn't surprised that the temporary "guest" in her quarters who'd long become permanent wasn't present. Theon was caught between ward and hostage, so he lacked responsibilities of any kind and was usually left to his own devices. The Greyjoy heir would have likely gone out trapping with them but Lyarra knew he confined to his quarters as punishment and would be for two days yet. She resolved to get her hands on an extra portion of whatever would be served as desert at dinner, and sneak it to Theon at the first opportunity. It was the least that she could do, as Theon's punishment had been earned for Lyarra's sake.

 Lyarra supposed that, in another life, she might have disliked the cocky squid. He had many qualities she didn't like; he was mocking, his morals were often variable depending on what the situation got him and he was sly in a way Lyarra had been raised to dislike. Just as Lyarra had spent most of her life inseparable from Robb however, she'd found herself falling into a friendship with Theon as well. Yes, it had started because she'd hit him hard enough with her wooden sword to put his wrist in a splint and sling only a few weeks after the Ironborn came to Winterfell but it had settled into something better since, as had Theon in general in Lyarra's opinion.

 Greyjoy was not only Robb's best friend, barring Lyarra but Theon served to give Robb some much needed levity in life. Likewise, Robb grounded Theon by giving him loyalty and responsibility and an assurance of home and safety when his life was otherwise certain to be forfeit if his father stepped out of line. Lyarra wasn't sure that she necessarily gave Theon anything but she certainly didn't take anything away from him. Perhaps, she supposed, she offered him a sister and a view of her sex he wouldn't have otherwise had. He had grown up amidst salt wives who were not better than slaves and wouldn't have imagined otherwise as the Ironborn raised their sons and daughters apart.

 Lyarra tended too much towards introspection and melancholy according to most of her family but Theon had been with the family since before she turned seven. She didn't feel the need to analyze his place deeply. If she was family but no Stark, why not Theon? After all, if Robb had taken one of the guardsmen from House Forrester to task for speaking disrespectfully about his bastard sister, it would create a situation their Lord Father would have had to handle that could spiral out of control and into resentment amongst one of their bannermen.

 If Theon beat the shit out of the human spittle that had been telling everyone in the training yard about how bastard women were easier than whores and twice as gullible when it came to lies of love between the sheets then it was just an incident that called for an apology and punishment. Their father didn't have to find out the reason why the scuffle had taken place. Robb could tell Lord Forrester the full of it, leaving the man embarrassed but also indebted to his Lord's heir for not shaming him publicly for his men's poor discipline. With saved face came greater loyalty and a chance to remind everyone that Robb looked like a Tully but was definitely a Stark. He would tolerate no disrespect but he'd deal with it fairly, honorably and practically.

 Lyarra knew that she had Theon's influence to thank for the latter. Theon could be hot-headed but he was a man grown now. Having spent most of his life in a position that was luxurious, kind but constantly tinged with the danger of Ice falling on his neck should his father revolt again had taught the Ironborn to look at situations realistically. If Robb's oath to personally intervene to save Theon hadn't earned the fosterling's eternal loyalty, then his plan to do it by having Theon symbolically renounce his name so that the Greyjoy heir was still "killed" by Lord Stark to fulfill his own oath to King Robert, had done so.

 Lyarra shook her head to drive the memories away and blew out a breath. She walked past the small bookshelf that held the few books that stayed in her room and reached out to retrieve the more comfortable of the room's two seats. The other was a small stool and Lyarra grinned as she moved the better chair under her "desk" and positioned the stool in front of the smaller table. That table was covered with several sewing and yarn baskets, neatly hemmed and folded muslin pattern pieces for gowns, stays and jars of beads, amongst other things. Pride of place was an abstract wooden box that Lyarra had just carved by cutting away excess wood and polishing a burl she split and hollowed out to form an oddly shaped, organically rounded, box. The box contained the necessary knives, gouges, polishing materials and punches needed to make beads from bone, stone, or any other material that was handy.

 Lyarra had gotten the first two layers of paint on the falcon carving, sealing the wood and establishing the base colors she'd shade away from, when the door to her quarters opened with a rapid series of knuckle-raps that was more a staccato warning of an entrance to come than a request for permission.

Arya Stark stumbled into the room in a flurry of mud-stained skirts and mussed, rapidly unraveling dark braids all topped with a scowl angry enough to grace the muzzle of a real direwolf. Then, with a sound halfway between a snarl and a curse Arya shouldn't have ever heard, let alone repeated, the spindly little girl threw herself down upon the bed, mussing the covers and sending furs in every direction but not quite knocking them upon the floor.

 "I hate Septa Mordane! Will you please come back to our lessons?" Arya whined and Lyarra felt a stab of guilt for having escaped the Septa and left her baby sister to the woman's non-existent mercies.

 "Lady Stark and the Septa both agreed that, as a bastard, I do not need the finer skills a real lady would have use of and that my time is better spent in lessons with Maester Luwin and refining the skills I already have," Lyarra replied instead, feeling it her duty to try and keep her sister from unintentionally stirring up trouble with her mother.

Arya was her staunchest defender and the youngest of Lord Stark's trueborn daughters had proven the only one to truly argue with her mother over Lyarra's nature and place in their family. Inevitably, Arya ended up punished for it when the little wolf-girl lost her temper and accused her mother of being unfair. Far worse was when she had finally grown old enough and perceptive enough to have once accused Lady Stark of being jealous because Lyarra's mother was someone their father chose. Lyarra had never felt more guilty than she had while watching Arya's face turn red as she stubbornly held herself from crying, as their grim looking father took his youngest daughter over his knee for having disrespected her mother so.

"That's stupid; you're a better lady than anyone." Arya, staunchly loyal to the last, snorted in derision.

"I try." Lyarra felt her lips turn up in a little smile.

Because she did. Her sparring in the mornings with Robb aside, Lyarra did work hard to be a lady and set a good example for her sisters. She could do nothing to reverse the stain of her bastardy or change the way that the world viewed her and the hostility it heaped on her head. What she could do was refuse to live down to their expectations and instead seek to prove every backwards notion about what bastards were like wrong. Lyarra Snow would never hold the Stark name but she was determined not to dishonor her Stark blood.

"You should be having singing lessons; you're a lot better than Sansa and I sound awful," Arya complained, rolling over to look at Lyarra with gray eyes only a couple of shades lighter than her own nearly-black gaze. "You make people cry, Lyarra."

 "That's not necessarily a sign of talent." Lyarra shook her head and Arya huffed, shaking out her tangled, straight dark hair. "Sansa's a very good singer and she's doing well on the harp."

"You should be learning the harp. You really liked it!" Arya shot back and Lyarra clamped down on that old hurt as fast as she could.

She was sure it was Lady Catelyn who had pushed her father into discontinuing her harp lessons. Septa Mordane had required all but a direct order to begin teaching her but even she'd had to admit that Lyarra had shown promise. Then, after she'd made her first and only performance in the Great Hall, the lessons had been brought to a quick halt. Lyarra had thought it would be enough that she'd waited until most of the household left after dinner and only the family and some of the guards and kitchen staff - always the last to dine - were left but she'd been wrong. Apparently the very public approval of the bastard's talent had infuriated the Lady completely. Or rather, that was the only explanation Lyarra could think of for the fact that her father forbade both any more lessons on the harp or Lyarra singing in public like that again.

 "I really like carving too, and now I have more time for it." Lyarra replied, and then smiled. "Besides, the carving makes me money."

 "You're getting so good people are asking about you in Wintertown." Arya nodded, humming in agreement and perking up. "Do you think father would let me start trapping with Bran? Robb could teach me too and I could sell the skins and use the extra money to buy a sword of my own!"

 "It would take a very long time to earn a sword from trapping." Lyarra said and felt obligated by honesty and caution to add, "I don't think Lady Stark would allow it either, Arya. She only really agreed to it with Bran because it's tradition and it keeps him from climbing so much."

 "Lords hunt, smallfolk trap," Arya muttered, her scowl coming back again.

 "Lady Stark didn't say that," Lyarra countered.

 Lady Catelyn might think it but Lyarra knew the woman had spent too long in the North to say something like that openly. She might have brought her Seven Gods with her and half her ladies were from the Riverlands but Lady Stark wasn't foolish. She'd never openly disdained a single tradition in her acquired kingdom, even if she didn't practice them herself.

 "No, but her sister did. Aunt Lysa's last letter was awful." Arya complained and Lyarra groaned.

"Arya, do not read your mother's mail!"

 "Or at least don't get caught at it!" A cheerful voice with a Westerlands outfit said from the door. Lyarra looked over and found it open as the other occupant of the chamber entered, shutting the door soundlessly behind her. "I have a hot blackberry pasty if you can tell me what was in it."

 "Gwyn," Lyarra sighed.

 "I only spy on kin for kin," Arya said firmly and paused, looking longingly at the basket hooked on the blonde girl's arm. "But I can tell you where Jeyne Poole keeps the love letters she writes herself and pretends are from that beau she invented."

 "Deal!" Lady Gwyn Parren announced. She peeled back the layer of clean canvas beneath the embroidery in the basket to produce a steaming, golden brown folded pastry with star shaped slits gleaming with bubbling, black-purple goodness. 

It was very much like Lyarra's father to foster the daughter of a modest but brave knight. Ser Galen Parren was the son of a Lord's third son in the Westerlands and he'd fought bravely during the Greyjoy Rebellion. He had done so with an honor that was very distinct amongst some of Lord Tywin's other knights. He'd been one of the few of the Lannisport Guard to survive the sacking of that city and he had gone on to become the second-in-command of the city guard when the rebellion was over. When Ser Galen died and his wife followed shortly thereafter, his daughter was left with only a very modest dowry and no family to guide her. Rather than leave her to be forgotten and victimized, Lord Stark had told the great-aunt who'd written on Gwyn's behalf to send her to foster at Winterfell.

"Do you have enough for Theon and Robb?" Lyarra wanted to know.

"I dropped Theon's off on the way here but had to use Robb's to bribe the guard. It was Daffyd and you know he doesn't care how large your eyes get or how you pout unless there's something in it for him," Gwyn replied with a hint of admiration for the guard. She handed Lyarra one without prompting or haggling and earned a half-hearted glare from Arya as she wolfed down her own treat. "I told him and he said he didn't mind."

 "Isn't he in lessons with Maester Luwin?" Lyarra frowned, thinking of her brother's schedule.

 "Maester Luwin got ravens from King's Landing and Highgarden." Gwyn replied. "Robb was excused from lessons early but told to practice his figures by inventorying the armory for tomorrow's lesson."

 "Will Maester Luwin give us lessons later?" Arya butted in again, looking hopeful.

"No." Gwyn looked positively wilted with relief as she nibbled daintily on her own snack, having pulled the stool over by the fire with only a brief glare in the direction of the chair Lyarra had claimed. "We're both free of the maester for the day and all of his books."

 Arya hooted in amusement and sat up, intent on going to tackle Robb in the training yard and demand a lesson while everyone was busy. Lyarra considered it but decided she'd do better to keep painting the falcon until she had to wash up and change out of the slightly worn and rough clothes she was still wearing from hunting lost snares with her brothers. Gwyn stayed, both because it was her room and because she'd have to change for supper as well. She was wearing the simpler, draber, poorer clothing that she wore when she was in the kitchens.

Lyarra might have been taught all of the basics of running a household, and Maester Luwin was making sure that she could handle scaling up her lessons to any size of keep - even one so large as Winterfell - at her father's insistence, but Lady Stark wasn't going to allow Lyarra any household responsibilities. In her mind it would just be a foothold Lyarra used to try and usurp something that wasn't hers; though how she was supposed to do that when she was a Snow and a woman besides she had no idea. The result was still the same; Lyarra had Ned Stark's blood in her veins but less to do than even a fostered girl from a modest family who Lady Catelyn didn't even like. 

Lady Gwyn had arrived at Winterfell not quite three years before as a girl of ten. She'd been strangely jumpy and standoffish at first, which had prompted Lady Catelyn to indulge her motherly impulses. Unfortunately it became clear very quickly that, for all that she wasn't rich or powerful, the daughter of the Westerlands in their midst still had pride. Becoming Lady Stark's project or her pet, rankled and Gwyn quickly proved to have a sharp tongue and a habit of seeing weakness to strike out at quickly.

 Even if her sharp tongue had been turned on Lady Stark, Lyarra hadn't liked the younger girl at first. She'd seen twelve years when the small blonde girl arrived with her honey-tan (that had faded) and light, bright, golden hair. Where Lyarra had only just started growing into her long, angular, face and her skinny body began to blossom into a slender grace, Gwyn had been immediately pretty in much the same way Sansa was growing into. Her face was heart-shaped, with sloping cheekbones, a small, pert nose very different from Lyarra's lupine beauty and huge dark blue eyes that appeared guileless rather than stormy. Where Lyarra's hair was tangled, nearly-black curls, hers was easily braided golden waves. Her lips were a sculpted rosebud rather than a natural pout.

Lyarra had felt awkward and very much a bastard in the face of the girl's razor sharp courtesies and sarcasm. She'd felt it was unfair that her Lord father's wife intended to pass the punishment around, as it were, by exiling the fosterling to Lyarra's only newly allowed private room. Yes, Lady Stark said it was because they couldn't leave a highborn girl alone in the guest wing where only Theon had quarters but Lyarra knew it was because she was uncomfortable around Gwyn and Gwyn was Southron enough that she had to feel insulted to be put into a room with the family's bastard.

Gwyn had confessed later, after their friendship was established, that her initial kindness had been entirely to spite Lady Catelyn. By that point it didn't matter. Lyarra had always been of age with Robb and was only just beginning to grow into being a woman and her determination to act like a real lady and prove Lady Catelyn wrong (barring learning to use a sword but that was just an essential skill Lyarra wasn't giving up) had still fit her awkwardly. Sansa was too young then, to be of any help and Lady Catelyn had already begun to drive a wedge between them by using Sansa's dreams of songs and knights and a Southron marriage as leverage. So Gwyn was the first other girl her age Lyarra ever really had contact with. They grew to know each other through doing up each others' stays and talking long into the night in their shared bed, while Gwyn slowly grew into a feeling of safety in Winterfell. It was probably not a perfect foundation for a friendship but it was as sturdy as the roots of Winterfell's great Ironwood trees.

 "If you need help with your lessons, you know that I'm here." Lyarra offered and Gwyn waved a hand at her, turning back to Arya to quiz her on the location of Jeyne Poole's secrets.

Shifting in her seat in a fruitless effort to get comfortable, Lyarra firmly stayed out of it. She loved Gwyn like Robb loved Theon but she wanted no part in some of the things that Gwyn got up to. The Westerlands girl had a mean streak if riled, and - unlike Arya - she wasn't likely to confront you in a direct fashion. Lyarra disapproved of her penchant for petty revenge but had learned to accept it. If Gwyn could deal with her silences and brooding without harassing her, Lyarra felt that letting Gwyn get back at the steward's daughter for spreading those foul old rumors that Septa Mordane had started was the least she could do.

 "Did you get hurt?" Arya demanded and Lyarra looked up from where she was mixing paints on the glazed palette on her left side.

 "No, I'm just sore." Lyarra made a face and pressed a hand low on her stomach, then pointed at her own back. "It's been bothering me since yesterday morning. I think I strained myself in the yard with Robb and then riding made it worse."

 "Were you wrestling with him?" Arya asked, then sagely advised. "Don't wrestle with Robb, he's too strong. At least not unless you intend to bite."

 "I'm too old to bite and so are you." Lyarra snorted.

 "I wasn't talking about me. Rickon didn't want to wash up last night and Mother told Robb to handle it," Arya replied. Gwyn snickered from where she was now sitting by the fireplace with an embroidery hoop.

 "I know," Gwyn drawled. "Robb showed me the marks and asked me if I thought he could pass the scars off to his future wife as having bravely fought off a wild animal."

 "I hope you said yes." Lyarra huffed.

 "Of course I did." Gwyn grinned. "I didn't want to lie."

Arya was left whooping with laughter while even Lyarra gave in to giggling with the other two girls. She still thought to save half her pasty for Robb, wrapping it in a handkerchief. Later, when Gwyn was washing up for supper and Arya had been sent back to the nursery to do the same, she snuck into her brother's room and left it on his bedside table. Halfway through dinner however, the ache in Lyarra's belly had turned to a nauseous twisting and her back was a steady throb of low-slung pain. She asked to be excused, and her father granted it with a kiss to her forehead and a concerned expression as Lyarra went back to change and put herself to bed early.

 Four hours later Lyarra was awoken from her nap by the sound of the other girl cursing as she was unable to reach the laces on her stays because of how Lyarra had tied them.

"Sorry, Lady Stark found out that Robb and Sansa skipped dance lessons this afternoon." Gwyn apologized sheepishly in the light of her single candle as she shivered in front of the fire in her smallclothes. "She wanted to speak to your Father and Septa Mordane had gone to bed, so I had to provide the music. You slept right through me getting my guitar."

 Gwyn's guitar lived in its hardened leather case on hooks mounted securely to the wall; it had pride of place next to a painting Lyarra had done on a single glass-smooth board of her father and all of her siblings. Just as she was absent from the tapestry of the Stark family that hung in Lady Stark's solar that Septa Mordane had turned into a lesson and Lyarra had had to help stitch the borders on years before, Lyarra had omitted her father's lady wife from her painting. It was a pettiness she usually tried to rise above but Gwyn had a habit of bringing out the worst in Lyarra and then encouraging it. Lady Stark hated the painting but Ned Stark had asked that she give it to him, for his Solar, when she wed.

"I know that I can't keep my children with me forever but it will be a comfort to see them every day regardless," he had said.

Lyarra sat up with a groan that quickly morphed into a yelp of alarm.

 "What is it?" Gwyn's question wasn't nearly as important as Lyarra's mortification and outrage at the situation.

 "I'm wet!" She tried to express her embarrassment as she leapt up from the furs, feeling even more humiliated when she felt the dampness that had been gathered across her buttocks begin to run down the inside of her thighs.

"Your moon's blood?" Gwyn asked eagerly and held her candle aloft, revealing a dark red stain all across the back and streaked across the front of Lyarra's nightshift. "Ha! That'll show that dried up old hag, Mordane!"

Lyarra might have said something, anything, about getting back at Mordane for suggesting that Lyarra would never bleed because the true Gods would likely strike her barren for being a living sin. Unfortunately, she was distracted. Lyarra Snow reached forward with both hands to peel back the sheets, quilts and furs on the bed to see the damage she'd wrought to the linens. Her left wrist promptly protested the movement with a wave of pain as intense as if Gwyn had taken the piece sandstone that she used to polish stone beads smooth and rubbed it over the inside of her wrist.

Lyarra automatically clutched at her left wrist with her right. Gwyn had put the candle down to go grab some of the clean rags they'd been hoarding for when their moon's blood came and Lyarra staggered over, trying to hold her legs together so she didn't drip on anything, to see how she'd managed to make the situation worse with an unexplained injury. What she saw there pulled a shocked gasp from her throat.

There, on her left wrist, inked in brilliant colors as indelible as death's pallor and or the bleached and hidden bones in the crypts, was an image painted by the hands of the Gods.

"You're Marked." Gwyn whispered and Lyarra could only swallow and stare at her friend with wide eyes as her fate was decided in a room that smelled of blood and wild flowers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oberyn Martell has had better fortnights...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same warnings for Chapter 1.
> 
> The title is taken from Dylan Thomas' poem, "All That I Owe The Fellows of the Grave".

**Chapter 2 - 297 A.C.**

The sound of youthful laughter filled the air in the Water Gardens. Pink marble with gleaming gold veins, tall columns of white and a myriad range of fountains spread across Hoyse Martell's pleasure palace. Children of all strata of society played amidst the music of flowing water. All of this was precisely as it was meant to be and Prince Doran Nymeros Martell could not have been more relieved to find it so.

"I can't believe I'm not making some mistake somewhere that has thrown off our figures, Father." His nephew's serious voice greeted Oberyn's ears as he strode past Areo Hotah with a nod. The guard opened the door to Doran's private solar to allow the tall, lean man to enter. "I - Uncle! Come check my figures."

"Ah, the finest greeting from family that any prince could desire." The Red Viper drawled, pressing a hand to his chest in a mockery of being overwhelmed by emotion. "Accounting."

"Agriculture, actually but figures nonetheless." Prince Doran added sarcastically, sitting across the table from his son. "How are the girls?"

"As if you do not know." Oberyn snorted, walking over to his nephew to give Quentyn a crushing hug.

The stocky, strong lad used his broader shoulders and heavier arms to enthusiastically return the embrace. The Red Viper refused to wince in response; he would not rob the solemn man of one of the few remaining bits of his boyhood left to him: the belief that his infamous uncle was invincible.

"Loreza and Dorea have decided not to drive off this Septa." Oberyn finally relented and answered his brother's question after a fashion. "They've deemed her 'good enough' to give them their lessons and keep them company when Lady Yulia cannot."

"Well, that's a relief, though Lord Uller will be disappointed." Quentyn observed with a small smile. "He bet me a new sand steed that they would drive off at least five before Lori turned four. This is only the third and my cousin's fourth nameday is less than a fortnight away."

"Do not remind me that my daughters are growing up." Oberyn glared at his nephew and lightly shoved the sturdy young knight's shoulder. "I have tried to forbid it but, alas, the Gods have proven as uncooperative with me as they have with every father to make such demands of them."

"Indeed." Doran agreed quietly, the lines around his eyes briefly deepening before his expression smoothed out completely. He reached down to grasp the polished brass rings attached to the ebony wheels of his chair and turned it towards the balcony of his solar. "Such is the way of Gods and daughters."

Oberyn nearly winced and tried to think of something to say to soften his brother's grief. Unfortunately his own was yet too fresh. A longing for Tyene's sharp, intelligent eyes overcame him. Memories of the way she stood out as a flash of gold amidst her dark sisters crashed down on him and obliterated his eloquence. His sympathy remained, however, and he kept his silence for that very reason.

Doran didn't share his emotions with others. Oberyn's brother kept his anger but didn't hoard it like a miser, letting it eat him alive inside as Oberyn sometimes felt his thirst for vengeance was doing to him. No, Prince Doran Martell was a farmer of hate, and he planted its seeds well, watered them with plans, and waited to reap a harvest of retribution.

"Indulge your future Prince and check his accounting."

Oberyn rested a hand on Quentyn's shoulder, hoping to appease some of the guilt and anguish on his nephew's dark eyes as he teased the lad about a few of the more beautiful young ladies who'd made their way to Sunspear of late and asked after Doran's heir.

A year before, such questions came from hungry-eyed lords and knights. They were directed not at Quentyn then, but his sister. Oberyn could only think of Arianne with grief and he resented and regretted that his anger had already faded so much. He preferred fury to grief, and Arianne's actions had deserved righteous anger for their foolhardiness. What princess stood as Heir to Dorne and chose to use the cover of plague to try and elope?

One who felt she was being disinherited by her father and supplanted by her brother. Oberyn knew the answer, but it made it no less difficult to bear. He'd have raged at Doran for not bringing his daughter into their confidences earlier, but what good would that have done? Doran's insistence that Arianne was not mature enough, not collected enough to be trusted with their planned treason against the Crown had been proven all too true. She had slipped out of Sunspear under cover of darkness with Gerold Dayne of all the damned souls to trust.

At least that was revenge that Oberyn had not had to wait upon Doran's pleasure to take. His brother had sent him immediately to retrieve Arianne. Oberyn couldn't have held himself back if he'd tried when he found that Gerold Dayne had happily supplanted Arianne's plan with his own. Instead of rushing to the small cove west where a ship waited to bear her to Oldtown, the Darkstar had kidnapped Arianne and begun a journey back to his seat in High Hermitage. They'd only made it so far as Hellholt before the plague struck Arianne. He didn't know how but suspected it to be one of the wells alongside the road, where travellers gathered and disease spread.

Perhaps the infamous member of House Dayne should have been granted some clemency. He'd had to have known that stopping at the seat of House Uller would put him into the hands of his enemies. Gerold Dayne had stopped at Hellholt, however, in some slim hope that having a maester on hand might keep his unwilling wife alive. Arianne had been dead when Oberyn arrived, however, and the Viper in no mood to give the man a fair fight.

Oberyn had sent Doran a raven. In it he broke the news of Arianne's death as gently as he could. He'd also included a rough sketch of Gerold Dayne, staked out in the desert around Hellholt, providing a feast to some brave vultures willing to taste living flesh. Doran's response had been short and to the point; Oberyn had sent more sketches.

"These cannot be right, and yet they are." Oberyn eventually pulled himself from his memories and checked the figures a second time. He looked up to the back of his brother's gray-threaded black head with a frown. "Was some mistake made on the initial figures? These are final estimates, yes?"

"They are the final crop production estimates for Dorne, but I independently ran the figures myself. Quentyn did the same, and we have checked our work multiple times with our treasurer." Doran turned his chair around then before resting his hands in his lap. "We have had more rain than we've seen in a century for the last two years, Oberyn, and now we're reaping the dividends. Dorne has blossomed."

"You need only look out the window to know that." Oberyn waved a hand dismissively, but then sat down and nodded towards the crystal decanter of wine sitting upon a nearby sideboard.

Quentyn obligingly got up and poured his uncle a cup and another for himself when his father refused. He then stepped forward and pushed his father's chair into position so that the three princes of Dorne were all facing each other around a small, round table. Oberyn's mind flashed back over the years and he swallowed past a memory of sitting at the same table in his mother's solar with Elia. They had worked on their lessons while his patient brother, newly knighted, sat beside them and helped them fight their numbers into submission.

Elia had previously done Oberyn's figures for him, allowing him to draw. They'd fooled their septa and tutors for years that way as small children. Their mother, the ruling Princess, had been too busy to notice. It was only Doran's arrival as he returned from being squired that had ended their ruse. Oberyn had resented him for it until the moment he'd realized that the older brother he barely knew was willing to help them. With children no coin was more valuable than time, and it was best spent lavishly. Doran had given them both that until he'd left on his journey and Oberyn had discovered to his shock that he wasn't hopeless at arithmetic.

Elia had never cared to draw, however, and eventually it had been given up entirely along with her music lessons. Elia Martell had many great skills, but she could not sing and was too farsighted to draw well. The ladylike skill they'd settled on for Elia had been archery, and in that she'd excelled until the Mad King had locked her in Maegor's Holdfast without her bows and arrows and left her to Tywin Lannister's dogs.

"Whoever you're killing in your mind, Oberyn, finish them quickly and come back to the discussion at hand." Doran drawled and Oberyn blew out a breath and shot his brother a brief glare that only earned him a graying eyebrow filled with amused rebuke. Oberyn put his sandaled feet up on the table in retaliation, counting on Doran's desire to speak and not haggle over his bad manners to allow him the victory.

"Your numbers are sound, Quentyn." Doran told his son firmly. "Given the Reach lost so many of its smallfolk to the plague it hasn't been able to produce to its fullest extent despite the fine weather this year and last. It's harvests have still been impressive, but not much beyond a normal summer year for the Reach. Currently our crop yield has exceeded our population far enough to either become a hinderance for Dorne's internal economy or a boon that may revitalize trade. The question is how to arrange these facts to most benefit our people."

Oberyn sipped his wine and listened as Doran settled into the lesson in ruling. Quentyn's nervousness slowly settled out as his answers flowed and his father looked on him with quiet pride as his son rose to the challenge. Everyone in the room ached that it wasn't Arianne sitting across from Doran in one way or another, but grief would not topple their country now as it threatened to topple the Vale.

"If we've seen ten years of Summer, what will Winter be like when it arrives?" Quentyn's question jarred Oberyn from his thoughts. "I've read that the North needs to import food if the winter is longer than four years. If I'm to wed - I mean, it could be leveraged against Winterfell."

"I need to speak to my brother." Oberyn interrupted as soon as the name of the Usurper's Kennel was spoken. His mind veered down a path he'd refused to speak of for the last fortnight as a sudden, painful burning scraped across the inside of his left wrist.

"Mannerly as always." Doran observed, but his own dark eyes had focused on his brother with a hint of relief. "Go make sure the new septa yet lives and your winnings are secure. A free sand steed for Lord Uller's stables is nothing to risk lightly."

Quentyn managed a smile for his father and a bow for his prince and uncle before he left the solar.

"I assume you're ready to tell me what has had you in such a foul mood of late?"

Doran's question brought Oberyn out of his seat, the false comfort the morning had brought him vanishing along with the contentment of listening to his brother reacquire enough of the man he'd once been to guide his son as he'd once guided his siblings. Oberyn had lost half of his heart and what little was left his innocence when Elia and her children were murdered in the Red Keep. He'd nearly lost his mind and led his people to slaughter along with it. Doran, however, had a crueler fate.

Loss was far less damning than sacrifice. Oberyn had been willing to throw away his life and any others he need for his revenge that was not Doran's way. While Oberyn raged and sobbed and howled his grief Doran silently gathered his trust up in his arms and smothered it upon the altar of justice.

He put his marriage, his children's future, his dreams, and the manifold kindness of a gentle and fair heart beside it and burnt them in offering. Mellario had raged at him, and then she'd left him, but Doran had not broken. Instead Oberyn had watched over the years as his Prince had collected the bones of his sacrifices from that altar and revealed the metal that lay within. Reforged into shield and spear he held the first over his country and his people while the other stood poised at the throat of their enemies, all unaware of the danger at their neck because they were occupied instead by the hissing Viper at their feet.

Oberyn still hadn't entirely forgiven Doran for denying him his revenge or the death he'd sought in his grief. He'd grown to love his only living sibling even more, however, as he finally grew to know him. That Doran had forced him to live a second time, past yet more grief, Oberyn found he couldn't resent in the slightest. He'd forced Doran to go on too and he was not such a young fool that he hadn't been able to share his grief with his brother this time.

"Did you hear the news from Essos?" Oberyn asked instead of answering his brother's query, rubbing his hand over the silk of his coat's sleeve to try and soothe the skin on the inside of his wrist. "It's rumored in Mereen that they have erected a statue of you in Qarth."

"I shall go down in history as the most beloved man ever to ship diseased lifestock across an ocean."

Oberyn let out a bark of laugh despite himself. The location where the cure for Greyscale and Grey Plague’s spread had come from was nearly as absurd as its vehicle. Who would have expected salvation from sick goats?

"You shall go down in history as the only man in Westeros intelligent enough to stop throwing gold at a depleting resource and instead make your own. It was a stroke of brilliance to put diseased bucks amidst flocks of healthy nannies and let nature take its course." Oberyn replied cheekily. "You could have emptied even the Lannisters coffers selling to them."

Grey Plague, Greyscale's faster and deadlier cousin cropped up unpredictably across the world. No place was safe, and rank meant nothing to the disease that turned you to stone. Death entombed in your own body came, and few survived it once they contracted it, though survivors were fortunate enough to enjoy a full recovery without the disfigurement of Greyscale. The plague had come from the Dothraki plains only a few moons into the 295th year after Aegon's Conquest of Westeros. From a small group of unfamiliar slaves sold at market in Norvos, it had spread quickly.

The terrible thing about this iteration of Grey Plague was that it possessed an incubation period of weeks. Normally Grey Plague struck fast and killed quickly, leaving little time to spread it to others across distances. This time the disease moved from city to city with slaves and traders alike without anyone the wiser until it began to creep through the population.

It arrived in King's Landing first, but Dorne only a few days later. Oberyn had sent for information from the Citadel, seeking to find some pattern and pray for some way to halt the spread. Closing your gates did no good if, for all you knew, it was already in your midst and just silently growing in someone who unknowingly carried death with them.

It wasn't the Maesters or the Faith that had saved them in the end. Instead, of all of the things to shock Westeros, what saved them was a savage from the Mountain Clans of the Vale. The man carried a bent bronze sword and came into the Riverlands with a herd of rough mountain goats with ragged fur. According to Doran's spies the Blackfish had refused the man passage at first, for his animals were clearly diseased. The man's mad ramblings about having been sent by the Voice of the Old Gods who'd spoken to him from a Weirwood tree didn't help.

Thankfully Brynden Tully had eventually relented. Hoster Tully's brother may have been one of the men who'd reaped the rewards of Elia's slaughter but he wasn't a complete idiot. He may have thought the illiterate raider and shepherd mad but he'd listened to him. When the clansmen had claimed that he had a way to keep the Grey Plague from spreading and prevent a person from catching either it or Greyscale the Ser Brynden had come down to see the neat scar upon the back of the man's shoulder and hear his tale of using a block of wood set with needles to pierce one of the oozing patches of rash on a goat suffering Goatscale.

When the man explained that catching it gave you a rash, but once it healed you could not catch either of the diseases the Blackfish had made him an offer. If the clansmen spoke truthfully he shouldn't be afraid to go to a keep with an outbreak. If he stayed there for two moons without catching the disease, Ser Brynden would help him see the Old God's will done and personally make sure the King knew of this miracle. The goatherd had proved himself just so and gone farther yet. He'd taken his goats with him and used this new thing that the maesters were calling inoculation amongst the smallfolk of the village he'd been sent to. Not a single new case had appeared amongst those willing to share a stamp of needles with a sick goat, and every other person who'd ended up barred inside the walls of the village by Lord Hoster's order had died.

"I could have." Doran agreed calmly.

Oberyn couldn't think of anything to say to that. He knew that with Doran nothing was simple. His brother had nearly bankrupted Dorne buying up every diseased goat he could after his spies told him of the Blackfish's "experiment", but the gamble had paid off. Dorne was already suffering less from the disease than the more populous kingdoms of Westeros, as even Grey Plague couldn't fly across the wastes of the Red Desert or hop from distant keep to isolated village without someone carrying it. Still,Oberyn knew that his brother had grieved for every one of his lost people from smallfolk to his own daughter. He'd already received the raven telling him Mellario had succumbed along with her entire household in Norvos.

The brother who'd been newly knighted and eager for adventure only to put that aside to help his brother learn his sums had done it because it was right. Prince Doran, who sat upon the sunchair and who willingly let the world think himself too crippled to walk when most days he could suffice with a cane, was making yet another gamble. While a goat with Goatsbane rankling its hide was worth more than its weight in gold Doran had been infecting almost every goat in Dorne rather than merely trying to save his interests.

Then he'd shipped them out, sending them to every corner of Westeros and Essos besides along with instructions on how to finally end the threat of becoming a Stone Man or a stone corpse. In King's Landing the Usurper had done almost nothing. First he'd shut the gates, then he hadn't been able to stand the suffering and ordered masses of Maesters to come serve his people without any hope of cure, spreading the disease further. Then, when there was a way to prevent the plague from spreading he'd ordered all of the goats in the Crownlands brought to the capital.

An act, Oberyn noted, that had nearly sparked a rebellion amidst the Crowlands lords. It had only been averted by the fact that they'd ignored the order, and because there were so few goats to be had. After all, it had been the law for decades that any goat found with goatscale was to be killed and its corpse burnt. Either way, the order had triggered a mass emigration of the smallfolk towards King's Landing where they believed salvation lay. Instead they'd found that there were neither enough goats nor enough food to go around.

Thanks to Prince Doran, however, goats had begun to arrive from the South. They were spread amidst healthy flocks at his guidance as ravens flew across the continent. The hysteria passed, the outbreaks began to wither and die out with no new victims available. For two years the plague raged, but a few weeks before the Citadel and the Faith - for once working hand-in-hand - reported that the last distant holdfast in the North and the Iron Islands had been reached, inoculated, and now knew to continue inoculating their children as soon as they reached six moons old. Even Essos had been sent the cure on Doran's orders, and the knowledge spread faster than even the disease had managed to move.

And wherever that knowledge spread, Oberyn noted with a certain satisfaction, Doran was beloved. He was the poor, grieving husband who'd lost his wife twice - once to distance and once to disease. The father who'd buried a daughter whose body was its own stone effigy without the change to reconcile with his child. Gold and gratitude flowed into the Martell's coffers as they received gifts from everyone from Dothraki Khals to the Iron Bank. Even Twyin Lannister had sent them gold, carefully totted up along with a ledger recording the worth of the goats sent to the Westerlands on the open market. It included the number of goats sent, the relative value put on Doran's advice on how to foster the disease, and a dozen other details that the Honorless Lion had somehow thought could expunge his debt to their family.

The goats the Old Lion could pay for in gold, Oberyn allowed, for Dorne was now richer than ever it was. Oberyn was going to take his own revenge in blood. Nothing else would do.

"Oberyn. Whatever you're working so hard not to think of, I beg you to speak of it."

The open worry in Doran's tone brought the Viper up short and he blinked as he realized that he'd continued pacing the room with no knowledge of what he was doing or how much time had elapsed. He chafed his arm and his thoughts twisted around him. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. Despite the fact that Oberyn had specifically come to the Water Gardens to meet with Doran a day earlier than was his wont to speak of this very matter, his mind was coiling in knots to avoid it.

Oberyn couldn't worry his brother further, however. He had some of a maester’s training Oberyn had thrown himself into treating their family, struggling to keep from losing anyone else he loved. When that had proven futile and he'd lost two more of the dearest women in the world, he'd thrown himself into treating the smallfolk in the shadow city. The Viper had worked himself nearly to death.

In many ways he wished that he'd succeeded, as he wished he'd died for Elia's justice. Instead he'd awoken after collapsing in exhaustion to find his brother's hands, knuckles swollen red and painful, wrapped around one of his own. The Prince of Dorne was nowhere in evidence as his brother sat at his bedside and spoke four words.

_ "Don't leave me alone." _

Waking up in a bed Oberyn knew he hadn't put himself into, weaker than he'd ever felt even as a small child, Oberyn had known he couldn't leave Doran to be the last of their mother’s children. Oberyn knew that asking his brother to endure this one last grief was a coward's way out and he had never been a coward.

"The Gods are cruel, don't you think?" Oberyn finally asked, turning and slouching aggressively backwards against one smooth marble wall, as though it was the curvature of his spine holding the palace up with sheer pique.

"Generally I merely find them uncaring." Doran's face was composed but his relief at this salty line of questioning was obvious as his eyes traced over his brother's stance.

Oberyn knew he was taking in the weight he'd regained. He'd barely eaten after he'd lost Ellaria to the plague and muscle and flesh alike had melted off his frame. By the time he'd lost Tyene to an infection of the lungs she'd gotten while helping him distribute inoculations Oberyn knew he had looked like a pale reflection of himself. He'd let his hair grow long and lank and his clothing had hung off of him like a cadaver. Two moons spent in the desert hunting a brigand who'd fancied himself king of the sands and scourge of the caravans had put him and his pride mostly back to rights.

"What particular offense have the Gods committed against you now?" Doran went on drawing him out with less caution than usual. The open demonstration of his brother's caring almost managed to turn the sneer that twisted Oberyn's lips into a smile.

"I've been Marked."

"What?" Doran stared.

"I've been Marked."

"That is a terrible jape." Doran reproved. "You usually have better taste than that."

"I've been Marked." Oberyn repeated again, standing up to his full height and glaring at his brother as his temper began to stir.

Doran frowned at him as though he were a lad of eight and had been caught chasing some girl at the Water Gardens with a biting lizard again.

"Oberyn, Marks are nothing to jest about. I was hoping you'd come here to discuss the matter we spoke of during your last visit."

"The Usurper's daughter and spare are still dead and that won't be changing." Oberyn snorted, crossing his arms. "His heir's a mad cur who tortures animals, and sadism isn't a phase children grow out of. The smallfolk blame the Stag King for the plague. The Faith of the Seven's panicking because there's been a resurgence for the Old Gods thanks to a savage from the Vale and some diseased goats. Yes, I want to talk of how to make all of that worse for the bloody Usurper but I tell you, I am Marked!"

"Oberyn, you were sighted entering three brothels in the last five days!" Doran finally huffed out in exasperation, rising carefully from his chair. He leant against it as he limped to the side where he could reach the sturdy ebony cane against his desk.

When he stood on his own feet Doran was an inch taller than Oberyn. How this could possibly be a significant measurement the younger prince did not know. It never failed to make him feel like he was being loomed over by his brother, knightly and princely as he stood kitted out in gleaming copper armor, while Oberyn was no more than a naked child playing in the pools.

"The buildings were the only thing I entered, dear brother!" Oberyn bit out his temper coupling with his embarrassment - again, now his temper was doing more than he could - to birth a dramatic and rude gesture in his brother's direction.

"If you want to point, use a polite finger." Doran's tone was as dry as it had been when Oberyn was a child. He let out a sound of pure frustration and rucked up his left sleeve, thrusting his wrist out and baring the bottom of his forearm.

Doran's look of absolute, open-mouthed shock was poor reward for Oberyn's suffering but he'd accept it.

The Gods had a strange and cruel sense of humor, and perhaps Marks were the best proof of this. They had different names and significance in every culture, but no single group of people was without them. The Maesters had searched out every fact they could find, trying to pin down a purpose and a logic to the appearance of the Marks, but none had ever been found. Instead it was left up to the various faiths of the known world to describe them.

The Faith of the Seven had, unsurprisingly, spun the Marks into something that was an equal mix of romance and divine retribution. They claimed that the Gods drew the symbols that matched soulmates on the arms of those they intended to bring together as one. These people would then be bound together, soul-to-soul, tied together for life by the will of the Gods.

They did not claim that these people were brought together for love. Oh, they sang a good song for the young maidens about love growing in such circumstances, but there was that eternal threatening undercurrent that most religions possessed. Marks, the priests of the Seven claimed, could be because of a true love, like Prince Duncan for his Jenny, but they could also be for any other reason the Gods wished to bring people together. They could appear to appease two warring houses, they could occur in order to bring together feuding neighbors, or even as punishment. Love they explained, would happen because shouldn't people be filled with absolute delight before the Seven's Will?

In Dorne, the Rhoynar held Marks more sacred than most. While Oberyn was well-read and traveled, he had no idea what the North thought of Marks. He, however, had been raised to esteem them. Not because they were merely holy, but because they were Paths of Greatness. When a man and a woman were Marked their children were anointed by destiny, and fated to do great things. In Dorne Marks were celebrated, bringing on feasts and gifts and recognition even when they occurred in the smallfolk.

One thing that most religions agreed on was that marks were indisputable and holy. The ferocity of this devotion differed a little from place-to-place, but Oberyn couldn't recall ever having heard a tale where trying to circumvent them didn't result in tragedy. In all of the places he'd been trying to circumvent a Mark was considered unacceptable, and that was without the physical risks of weakening, sickness, and phantom pain that were proven results of separation from the soul fated to join with your own. Not to mention the other mitigating factors.

"Oberyn…" Doran breathed out, looking from the Mark on Oberyn's wrist and then up at his brother's face before shaking his head slowly and waving a hand behind him. "Sit."

It was clearly an order from his Prince and Oberyn scowled. He watched as his brother walk to the door and order Hotah to tell his secretary that his schedule was to be cleared until he gave notice. The Princes of Dorne were not to be disturbed.

"Thank you." Oberyn sunk slightly into the chair he'd taken and scratched at his wrist irritably.

The skin shifted from pain to a pins-and-needles tingling.

"Don't scratch." Doran couldn't quite resist being a nag though.

Oberyn hissed a little at his brother as Doran lowered himself into his own chair and took possession of his left arm. He fidgeted aggressively just to annoy Doran, tugging his arm slightly towards him even though he knew he wasn't about to have it returned until Doran was satisfied. He stretched his legs out into Doran's space as well, just to share his discomfort.

"It is a graceful image, at least." Doran finally said and Oberyn rose from his chair, tugging his released wrist to his chest and then dropping his hands to clench his fists.

"Oh, yes," Oberyn replied with pithy disdain, "Surely having a pretty Mark upon my wrist makes up for a choice between offending the Gods and living a lifetime of celestially enforced chastity or binding myself to one of the brats whelped by the Usurper's dog!"

"I imagine it was a trout that did the whelping," Doran snorted. "Eddard Stark's contribution would have happened at an earlier date."

Oberyn refused to be amused. Instead he seethed. It was a skill he'd honed for decades.

"Do you want me shackled to some barbaric child with a horse's face and a cunt as cold as their family motto? You know Marks appear when girls flower or a lad's voice settles. I am a man of forty!" Oberyn argued hotly. "Are you glad for it? I can no longer serve as an example of Dornish licentiousness and excess to our pious neighbors to the north, and you've been bidding me to show restraint since I first painted my sheets in my dreams."

"Oberyn, I want you to be happy. If the Gods had to curse one of us I would far rather it be me than you or our children." Doran's expression shifting from the default smooth control it had fallen into when he'd banished his shock and into one of controlled frustration. "If the Gods asked what I wanted, Mellario and I would have been Marked and she would never have left me, or Ellaria would have borne a Red Viper half covered in Sand upon her skin and I could have spat upon tradition and seen you wed to the woman you loved as I was."

The rare display of passion, leashed as it was in a moderate volume and brutally controlled tone, was enough to bring Oberyn back into his seat. When Doran wheeled his chair around and then returned with two glasses of wine and the decanter, Oberyn muttered his thanks and drank deeply. He savored the sour bite of the wine, grateful when Doran said nothing while he worked his way through the first glass. He'd only indulged in a sip of the second when Doran spoke again.

"How long has the Mark been present?"

"A fortnight and two days." Oberyn felt exhausted now that his confession had taken place and his temper had spent itself.

He'd wasted his rage alone for days, and he couldn't bring himself to develop the kind of lasting hate he felt for others and direct it at some barely flowered girl he'd enver met. Instead Oberyn had attempted secrecy and tried to rally his mind to the idea of never knowing the pleasures of the flesh again. A body's ability to find pleasure was bound to their soul through their Mark, and unless their soulmate was present the pleasures of the flesh were simply not an option.

When he'd lost Ellaria two years before Oberyn had spent months in worry and exhaustion battling the plague. He'd believed he would die without the love he'd found that balanced his hatred with kindness and his fury with tenderness. She had accepted him and all his faults, and beyond that, she'd loved him for the very things other women had loathed in him as inconstancy. They'd shared their passions and been stronger for it, and even with two years to grow used to her loss Oberyn knew he'd never truly be reconciled to it. Like Elia, like Tyene, she'd taken part of his heart with her, and he'd always feel the wound.

Time, habit, and the knowledge that Ellaria would have been furious with him for denying himself so in her name had restored some of his passions in the last few months. He hadn't been of a mind or heart to visit a brothel. He and Ellaria had frequented all of the decent establishments around Sunspear and without Ellaria there to enjoy it with him, the idea held too many sad memories to return there. His pride and refusal to contract some kind of crotchrot meant that he most certainly wasn't going to visit any poor whorehouse.

Instead he'd rekindled a brief affair with the Bastard of Godsgrace. Ser Daemon Sand had once been his squire and he knew and trusted the younger man for being as honorable as he was desirable. He still recalled fondly how Daemon had waited a few months after he'd been knighted, knowing Oberyn's opinion of men who dallied with their squires, and then appeared in his tent at a tourney the Daynes of Starfall were holding. Daemon had made his desires as clear as only a hand down your breeches and a tongue down your throat could make them.

Oberyn was only grateful that Daemon hadn't been with him when, in the middle of a meeting with his steward, his wrist had begun to itch. In retrospect he was offended that there hadn't been something more dramatic. A clap of thunder, a terrible burning, a crippling pain; any of it would have been better than dumbly hiding his arm under the table to scratch while he talked over the household pay schedule. He'd obliviously gone to the garderobe to relieve his bladder and see if he'd gotten bitten by a spider or something without knowing and managed to piss on his own feet in horrified shock when he'd seen the Mark.

Oberyn was never telling anyone that story. He'd come up with a suitably impressive lie later.

"Do you wish to conceal it further?" Doran asked solemnly and Oberyn winced.

His skin crawled at the idea. It wasn't Dornish to even consider it. A Mark meant your children were fated to greatness, that they were needed for something. Nymeria had come to Dorne bearing the golden spear of the Martells upon her wrist piercing her own red sun, and their children had carried that Mark as their sigil since. The Uller whose scorpion bolt had brought down Meraxes had been the product of such a Mark. More than half the Swords of the Morning had come from Marked parents, and that was just the greats of Dorne itself. History was littered with proof of their people's belief in the purpose of Marks, and who was Oberyn to try and deny his people a trueborn princess of their line who was destined for greatness?

"I repeat," Oberyn drawled with an endless well of sarcasm to back his words, "a lifetime of celestially enforced chastity."

Doran breathed out and nodded, looking torn between anger on his brother's behalf and amusement. Oberyn scowled at him for the latter, but Doran's face had already settled into familiar, unreadable lines. Behind his impenetrable dark eyes, however, Oberyn knew that more gears were turning than had ever been manufactured by all of the Maesters of Oldtown. Plans were forming and adjusting at speeds that would have made racing lightening weep as it tracked across the sky.

"I don't like it."

Oberyn finally bit those words out, letting his tone reflect the irritation he still felt even after battling over the idea for a fortnight. He had even visited three brothels just to try and prove to himself it wasn't real. It had been a failed hypothesis and the experiment unenjoyable as a result; even watching the pleasure of others had left him queasy. The discovery of that fact had left him so furious that he hadn't a single knight or guardsmen in his household who would spar with him since.

"I wouldn't expect you to." Doran agreed, leaning back. "Though there are advantages."

"I mean the Mark itself." Oberyn thrust his wrist out again.

"Artistically?" Doran raised his eyebrows and sat back, his tone mild. "I admit it's rather simple, but I think it's better for it. If I recall correctly Lord Bolton and his second wife were marked with a flayed horse."

"It looks as if we're being eclipsed." Oberyn replied in clipped tones.

The Mark on his wrist was his family's symbol: the red sun pierced by a golden spear, though its background was his own bronze skin rather than a field of orange. Inside and slightly smaller than the circle of the sun was a black circle the center of which featured a white direwolf's head with gleaming ruby eyes.

"It's wrong anyway." Oberyn complained. "The Starks' colors are a gray direwolf upon a white field."

"Colors are reversed for bastards, and as I recall, Stark's eldest trueborn daughter is but eleven." Doran replied calmly and Oberyn stared at him in shock. "Eddard Stark must be exceedingly fond of his natural born daughter to raise her in Winterfell amongst his trueborn children. It was likely over all of Lady Stark's countless objections that he refused to foster her, despite it being a chance to strengthen ties with his bannermen."

"I would respect the man more for it if he'd accorded Elia's children even a fraction of that charity."

"If our sister could be the Mad King's hostage, I don't see why we couldn't keep Lord Stark's in far greater comfort and safety here." Oberyn paused and eyed his brother.

"You are still sending Quentyn to Essos?"

"My actions have fostered good relations with the Free Cities, it would be a shame to let such an opportunity pass us by for political inroads into Essos." Doran replied placidly. "Besides, the unequaled generosity we were shown demands a proper response."

Neither said anything about the fact that Viserys Targaryen was dead of the plague. Illyrio Mopatis was dead as well and no-one knew anything of the location of Daenerys Targaryen. All of Doran's careful plans to destroy the Usurper and the Lannisters revolved around the presence of a Dragon, and this was not a mission they could entrust to anyone outside of their family.

The Usurper had lost his two youngest children to the plague. Tywin Lannister's health was still fragile according to reports from the Westerlands. Jon Arryn had lost his only son and Harry the Heir to the Plague and his wife had hurled herself through the Moon Door when her son died. The Vale was left with no direct heir and no hope of more as Jon Arryn had firmly announced himself far too old to remarry. The smallfolk were discontent and Dorne's reputation had never been better thanks to House Martell's actions.

Right now was the best possible time to make some kind of move against the drunken oaf who'd climbed onto the iron throne over the broken bodies of Elia's babes. The only problem was the North, that still remained absolutely loyal and was far too large and powerful to take lightly as a threat. No-one had ever conquered the North without dragons. Getting through the Neck without being poisoned and pincushioned with arrows was nearly impossible.

"I'll send a raven to the Citidel myself." Oberyn breathed out and watched as Doran nodded, then paused in thought before speaking.

"With your permission, Brother, I will write Winterfell."

"Since when does my Prince need my permission?"

"Because your Prince has never wanted to have anything to do with your sexual antics and this is uncomfortably close to procuring you a bedmate." Oberyn snorted in amusement despite himself.

"I'd rather you write that letter than I." Oberyn finally stood, making a face and shaking his head. "I'm in no mood to be polite."

"Go get drunk on my wine and write bad poetry." Doran suggested almost absently, wheeling himself towards his own desk - reminding Oberyn that while his brother could walk, it was still very painful - and reaching for a fresh quill and knife. "I promise to wait until you're snoring loudly before I send your daughters to drag you out of bed by the ankles."

"I do not snore." Oberyn stole the wine off of his brother's table in retaliation as he left the Prince's solar. Professional as always, Areo Hotah didn't bat an eyelash at the sight of Prince Oberyn Martell wandering back to his quarters while drinking directly from a crystal decanter.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Starks come to grips with how Lyarra's Mark changes things and Oberyn arrives at Winterfell.

**Chapter 3 - 297 AC**

 

"Is it true that the Red Viper has six bastard daughters?" Jeyne Poole asked in a lilting voice that poorly concealed mischief with false innocence.

 

Lyarra looked up from the trailing dagged sleeve she was hemming and felt a wave of relief as she recalled that Gwyn was in the kitchens for the entirety of the day. Strictly speaking, that was merely the younger girl's responsibility and a sign of the trust that House Stark placed in their fosterling. Functionally, it was both punishment and peacekeeping rolled into one. Lady Stark had dictated that Lady Gwyn Parren was to spend the entire day managing the kitchens without leaving them to keep her out of the Lady's solar. Gwyn had been baiting the steward's daughter again and the uneven contest had ended in tears on the young brunette's part.

 

"Prince Oberyn," Sansa interjected from her seat beside Lyarra, her normally soft and genteel voice injected with cold steel, "Is considered one of the most skilled knights in the Seven Kingdoms and is brother to the ruling Prince of Dorne. He should be addressed with the civility and rank of his birth."

 

Jeyne flushed, surprised to find her usual cohort glaring at her. She turned her eyes to Lady Stark in appeal against the unexpected attack. Instead she was met by a stern expression on the Lady's face and forced to mutter an apology.

 

"You're right, Sansa. Winterfell treats is guests with the full respect of their rank and our House's honor." Lady Catelyn intoned severely before her voice took on a more maternal note. "I would have all of you girls watch yourselves closely, however, while the Dornish party is here."

 

"Dorne is a wicked, licentious place." Septa Mordane commented from her own place between Alys Karstark and Loren Harclay. "The Prince himself is likely worst of all, and you're right to worry, my Lady. He earned his name poisoning his weapon in a duel, and his Prince sent him in exile for it. Not that he was cowed, for the Prince has _eight_ bastard girls to his name and I have heard he entertains himself with worse sins besides. Let that be a lesson to all of you, to pray to the Maiden and the Mother for a good husband."

 

"If he's got eight daughters, I seriously doubt his _weapon's_ poisoned." Lady Lyra Mormont drawled, and adjusted the leatherwork spread over her lap as she shot Septa Mordane a disdainful look. "That would have impeded the flow of daughters, and men are awfully precious about their _spears_. As for a worse sin, sodomy's disgusting, but he's hardly dining on babes like some of the wildlings do. Bumming hurts nobody but those involved so I fail to see how it's another's business. Your Gods pick strange things to get riled about in the South."

 

Lyarra felt her face heat up and bit her cheek to keep from laughing. Lady Stark's normally well-shaped lips vanished altogether as she pressed them together in disapproval. The fine Southron lady had successfully removed Gwyn from the sewing parties that had taken up Lyarra's days over her protests, but she hadn't been able to bar the daughter of one of her Lord Husband's bannermen from joining them. As such, there was no shortage of sharp-tongued mischief going on in the room and it gave every appearance of driving Lady Stark to distraction.

 

"What do poison and spears have to do with the prince's ba- his daughters." Sansa corrected herself quickly and Lyarra was torn between annoyance and warm gratitude for her sister's actions.

  
  


Over the last three years her little sister had drifted away from her. At first Lyarra's bastardy had mattered not at all to the redhead. Yes, it had confused the black-and-white, song-and-story gaze from which her sister viewed the world. What it had not done was change the fact that they'd spent years in the nursery together. Proximity and fondness eclipsed even Lady Stark's ability to project disdain and disapproval on Lyarra.

 

What had hurt was realizing what the actual wedge driven between them was. Lyarra had always been a thin girl with a bony face and tangled dark curls growing up; the kind of child no-one named a beauty. She'd grown into her looks in the year between twelve and three-and-ten, and gained a beauty of her own that Lyarra was both proud of and embarrassed by.

 

As she grew more beautiful Septa Mordane continued to parrot her endless supply of homilies describing the duplicitousness, jealousy, and betrayal that all of the sinful creatures known as bastards engaged in. It was implied that if Sansa made a good match Lyarra would seduce him, even as he courted Sansa. Stories were told of how Lyarra would become Sansa's husband's mistress after she "innocently" visited her younger sister. Murder was implied and adultery and usurpation outright stated as the inevitable fate of a highborn lady who trusted a bastard sister.

 

Lyarra had wanted to shake her little sister when she started to avoid her. Sansa had cried because she felt that Lyarra was stealing away the attention of every handsome male visitor who entered Winterfell. Lady Stark had comforted her, neatly failing to mention that visiting nobles would be far less forward with a trueborn daughter. Not to mention the fact that few men even noticed the beauty of a girl of nine or ten years. If they did, they were the sort of men best given a choice between the Watch and a strongly swung blade.

 

"They've nothing to do with anything." Lady Stark said primly. "Attend your work, Sansa. You need only remember not to be alone with any of the Dornish party. The Septa is right. Dorne is not the North and it's not properly Southron. It is its own place, and decent people are better avoiding it."

 

"I hear it's very accepting of bastards." Jeyne ventured to murmur, shooting a sideways look towards Lyarra again.

 

"Then it's very lucky that there are no bastards in this room."

 

Lyarra refused to be cowed. Instead she put her chin up and let her words ring out across the solar she'd spent most of her life avoiding. She bit off her thread aggressively as she watched Jeyne's face pale and then turn red under her gaze.

 

"Of course not!" Sansa interjected, bubbling again with delight. "The Gods do not make mistakes nor do they Mark the sinful! It's a gift from the Gods to be chosen to do their bidding, and they only choose the worthy, don't they Septa Mordane?"

 

"Yes." The Septa looked like she'd bitten into an apple and found only worms.

 

"So there's no dishonor in it." Sansa went on, her expression triumphant. "The Gods needed Lyarra, and so Father's honor is clean."

 

Lady Catelyn's expression suggested the sort of stomach upset that required a long stay in the privy. Lyarra felt the usual war between wicked delight and guilt at seeing the woman so discomfited. She had spent a lifetime working hard to stay out of the woman's way, and her father's lady wife had mostly allowed that. There had been occasional outbursts of disdain or dislike, but they were fewer than Lyarra knew might have happened with many other wives in Lady Stark's situation. It was just that knowing that made it no easier to bear the woman's cold manner and blistering opinions.

 

"Yes." Lady Stark said shortly and then turned to Lyarra. "What progress have you made on that gown? If the Prince's party arrives and finds insult in your appearance, it will shame House Stark."

 

"Prince Quentyn will love you on sight, Lyarra." Sansa enthused. "You're so beautiful and we've finished some of your new gowns and you're going to be a Princess! We can-"

 

"Do not get your sister's hopes up, Sansa." Lady Catelyn's patience had finally snapped and the iron control in her voice barely restrained her irritation at her favorite daughter. Sansa's love of stories and songs had outstripped her veneration of her mother. "Tis likely a cousin from a secondary line. House Martell still blames your father and the King for Princess Elia's death, and the Red Viper's ire most of all. The Prince's journey here is a political choice, as is the fact that they haven't mentioned her future soulmate's name. They wish to enlarge the dowry on offer before they confirm it's their household steward or his son that the Gods have involved in the matter."

 

"That would do little enough to repay the debt of honor House Stark owes for Princess Elia's rape and the slaughter of her babes." Lyra Mormont replied flatly. "Though I suppose that if you don't keep the Old Gods, blood debts would matter little in a Marked couple."

 

The rebuke was delivered flatly, and with something that was probably as close to subtlety as a Mormont was capable of. Lady Catelyn flushed at being reminded that, marriage and children aside, she was the foreigner in her own home. Lyarra was worried to see it. Gwyn had said that there was talk amongst the smallfolk of misliking Lady Stark for putting a Sept in Winterfell. If there was discontent it could be a danger to Robb, especially with his Tully looks.

 

She was jarred out of her thoughts by one of the maids knocking frantically at the door to announce that Prince Oberyn Martell's banner had been sighted flying over a large party of approaching riders.

 

* * *

 

"Who's here?" Lord Eddard Stark demanded of his son and heir as soon as Robb walked into his father's bedchamber.

 

Robb took the question to be an inquiry about which bannermen were already present in Winterfell, and not a request for who was approaching the castle's gates. He answered accordingly.

 

"Houses Mormont, Umber, Thenn, Wull, Bolton, Blackwood, Burley, and Karstark are here, Father."

 

"A good showing." Ned Stark breathed out and turned. "Has your mother seen to your brothers?"

 

"They were still in that fort they made out of cushions and blankets in the playroom, plotting their rebellion." Robb grinned and his father groaned. "Bran was dressing himself when I left with help from the nurses, and Rickon was allowing himself to be dressed as well."

 

"No success in explaining that it's not a rebellion as Dorne has no standing here and I am the authority in the North?"

 

"Brandon's declared it a hostile negotiation. Rickon's still insisting that if rebelling worked for you and King Robert, he doesn't see why he can't do it to keep his sister."

 

Robb regretted the words the instant they left his mouth. Lord Eddard's face darkened with old anger and anguish and he shook his head. His brown hair slid around his shoulders as he bid his son forward to help him settle the finely tooled boiled leather armor over his gleaming silver scalemail. Robb had to swallow past his own foolishness in forgetting how unsuccessful his father had been at rescuing his sister. Aunt Lyanna was very much dead and his father still grieved her; Robb was not a toddler Rickon's age to forget that.

 

"Your mother and sisters?"

 

"Mother's busy wrestling Arya into a suitable gown, and Sansa and Gwyn have attacked Lyarra with ribbons or some such to make her ready for the other half of her Mark." Robb answered the somber question, grateful for the change in subject.

 

"And yourself?" His turned and put both his hands on Robb's shoulders. The auburn-haired boy suddenly felt like nothing more than a child with those large hands bracketing him in place and anchoring him in his own feelings.

 

"She should be marrying the Smalljon like we'd talked about." Robb's bitterness leaked out. "My sister has no place in Dorne. It's too far."

 

He bit his words off before they became a whine or worse, in the face of his sense of loss. Robb couldn't remember a moment of his life without Lyarra in it. He knew there'd been several moons where they'd lived without each other, but what did he know of that? He and Lyarra were all but twins in name and they'd gone through everything together growing up. Robb had been the one to insist that she share his lessons with Maester Luwin. He had been the one who championed his playmate being allowed to spar in the yard with him and continued to as she aged. They'd teethed on each other, given each other scrapes and bruises and scars. Thinking of her on the other side of Westeros, as far away as she could possibly get, was like a physical pain and Robb hated it.

 

"Aye, but the Gods have willed it so." Ned Stark stated with the same blunt, pained duty that was central to his nature. "How are the Umbers taking it?"

 

"The Greatjon's actually taken it well." Robb was relieved to say. "He says he's relieved that, if the Old Gods looked down on how Princess Elia and her children died, all they're asking to balance out the loss is a marriage. Then he said something I won't repeat about getting tangled up in affairs south of the Neck and what that leads to. Oh, and he insulted the Lannisters."

 

"If he keeps up the last bit our relations with Dorne might actually improve." Ned carefully settled his best silk surcoat over the formal armor. "Smalljon?"

 

"He got roaring drunk after arriving and seeing Lyarra for himself." Robb rubbed a hand over his face. "He's still a bit bloodshot around the eyes, but he's reconciled himself to it. Lady Mormont cuffed him about the head for blubbering and offered a chance to court one of _her_ daughters to toughen him up."

 

"Aye, that'd do it." Ned looked at his son sideways and smiled as he led him out of the room and through Winterfell's halls. "Speaking of which, I heard Lyra Mormont admiring a certain blue-eyed young lord earlier."

 

"Gods, please tell me it was Theon?"

 

Lord Stark's laughter, always infrequent in the solemn man, was good to hear after having vanished entirely with the appearance of his daughter's Mark.

 

* * *

  
  


_ "You said it would be no worse than Braavos." _

 

Ser Daemon Sand had complained at the beginning of their journey from Winterfell and Oberyn had been forced to throw his once-squire, once-lover, and longtime friend a cheerfully irreverent smile and proclaim: _"I lied."_

 

It was better than admitting he was wrong. Entirely, completely, frigidly wrong. The cold damp of Braavos in early spring was nothing like even summer in the North. Oberyn was well aware that the Dornish retinue looked like shrunken bears or perhaps a collection of some other shaggy beasts. The summer snow seemed determined to fall their entire journey from the port (which they'd arrived at in the midst of a storm hurling goose egg sized hail about) to Winterfell. Oberyn and those with him had purchased what felt like every spare fur in White Harbor.

 

He resented the air of comedy that it gave his party's arrival. With his brother's blessing he'd taken a large party with the bulk of it as fighting men. This was entirely appropriate and polite, for he was a Prince and this was a long journey with ladies involved. Not to mention the expected pomp of weddings involving the joining of Great Houses. Despite this Oberyn was well aware that there was an implicit threat involved and he had wanted to make a proper show of it.

 

Well, that was alright, he could improvise.

 

Perhaps they were buried in a thick coating of furs, but he'd brought a significant party with his brother's blessing. Once a Princess of Dorne had been taken to the Red Keep in the name of an alliance and instead become a hostage to call their people to war. As far as Oberyn was concerned, the Mark on his wrist was the Gods giving them leverage against the Usurper's Dog. The Mad King's last two children were gone - one dead, one vanished. Doran's plans needed reorganization, but in all of them it was essential to keep the North out of it. Having the newly legitimized daughter of the Quiet Wolf in Sunspear would go a long way to doing this.

 

Not that Oberyn meant the girl any harm. In the four moons that had passed since he'd been Marked Oberyn had begun to feel the edges of the connection he was going to have with the she-wolf whether he wished it or not. Most of what he'd felt was flashes of hurt and trepidation punctuated by brief flashes of happiness. He was no Lannister to punish children for their father's sins, and the idea of making a girl younger than half his daughters miserable turned his stomach. He just wasn't too proud to leverage the Gods' cruel trick into getting a step closer to his sister's justice.

 

It was with this in mind that, wrapped heavily in layers of furs or not, Oberyn watched in satisfaction as two hundred Dornish spears rode into the keep along with the retinue of Lord Wyman Manderly. The constipated look on Ned Stark's face was more than worth the expense. Seeing that look mirrored in some of the Stark Bannermen, Oberyn decided they probably thought that it looked stoic. Instead it looked as if they were the victims of a mass bowel complaint. The thought was amusing enough to put a smile on the Viper's face that was all fang and venom.

 

"Prince Oberyn Martell, well met and welcome to Winterfell." Lord Stark intoned as if he'd never had a passionate moment in his life.

 

Oberyn might have lamented for the man's wife, or even offered to help (if the Gods hadn't seen to making that impossible). What stopped him from considering it, just as an amusing mental exercise, wasn't the five feet of Valyrian steel strapped to Lord Stark's back. Instead it was the cold, uncompromising and superior look in Lady Catelyn's eyes as she surveyed everything around her. Save for a brief glance at her children, the Tully woman was quite the cold fish.

 

"I have never seen a more welcoming set of walls, nor a less friendly wind to push me into them." Oberyn bowed deeply and watched as all of the appropriate gestures were made around the courtyard where the kith and kin of the North were gathered.

 

Oberyn could hear several of the Northern lords chuckling at his sally. He ignored their humor just as he ignored the insistent vibration beneath the skin of his wrist and in the back of his mind saying his soulmate was near. Instead he kept his eyes trained on Lord Stark's and was delighted to find he had an inch in height on the man. Perhaps the only advantage of the Martell nose was looking down at those who would find the gesture offensive and Oberyn employed it gleefully against the Warden of the North.

 

"The weather of the North often has that effect on people." Lord Stark managed something that was a distant cousin to humor and Oberyn noted that the man's gray eyes were searching behind him amongst the various guests and banners arrayed behind him.

 

"Given the great respect I have gained for your northern weather, why don't we move this along so we can get inside the fine keep you call home?" Oberyn quipped.

 

As the host, Lord Stark offered introductions first.

 

"My wife, Lady Catelyn Stark."

 

"You must consider yourself a lucky man, Lord Stark." Oberyn kissed her hand with a smoldering look through his eyelashes he didn't feel just to watch her otherwise pretty lips press flat with disapproval. "To have gained a wife so beautiful and won a war with the same vows."

 

"The Gods have been good to me." Stark grunted reluctantly, as if suspecting ambush. "My son and heir, Robb, my daughters, Sansa and Arya, and my two youngest boys, Bran and Rickon, stand beside them."

 

Oberyn greeted the children properly. They were, after all, but children. He did wink at the little redheaded girl skirting maidenhood, though he made sure no-one else caught the gesture. She was looking at him as though he were coiled to bite and she wasn't sure whether she would shriek in terror or swoon in delight when fanged. He supposed he was the first Prince she'd ever met and she was one of the girls to esteem that too much.

 

A title alone saved no-one's life, and Lord Stark would be a wiser father to teach his pretty daughter that. The youngest girl, with unruly straight dark hair caught in a stiff braid and a mussed, little gray and blue gown that was missing a button, seemed the wiser of the two. Her gray eyes were far warier than her sister's dreamy blue gaze.

 

"And this is my daughter, who has been Marked by the Gods Old and New to bring our Houses together." Lord Stark finally moved slightly, bringing forward the figure that was half-obscured by his shadow on the side opposite his wife and trueborn children. "The Lady Lyarra."

 

Oberyn felt his entire body go stiff with shock as the girl stepped forward, and the smirk he was wearing twist into a blank stare. He was catapulted nearly seventeen years into the past as he stared into a face he hadn't expected to see again outside of Hell. The back of his mind rang with Elia's soft intake of breath and his right hand stung from how her nails had scraped it when her husband rode past her to crown another the Queen of Love and Beauty.

 

"Prince Oberyn." Lyarra Stark curtseyed, rising slowly and showing him the deepest of respect.

 

It was only when her dark gray eyes looked up and caught his that the scales of the past fell from his eyes, and Oberyn managed a small smile and a bow in her direction.

 

"The beauty of the North is cast in a hard mold, it seems." He offered as he bent down and kissed her hand.

 

Due to how her father was hovering over her and the position they were standing in, he ended up taking her left in his. A bolt of something sharper than lightening shot around under his skin, vibrating through his bones, and percolating into his muscles. The faint unease teasing at the back of his mind, easily ignored, roared to the front as a mixture of melancholy, nervousness and genuine fear was directed at him.

 

It was the last that shocked Oberyn out of the hostile glare he realized he was shooting the girl. It also allowed him to look at her, rather than the dead aunt she so resembled. Lyarra Stark possessed a great deal of Lyanna Stark's beauty. Both possessed the long face of the Starks, both had fair skin, both were of slender figures with high breasts and long limbs despite being small women.

 

Where Oberyn recalled Lyanna Stark as being a wild girl who cheered and waved at the Tourney fighters and who was by turns angry, sullen, or whirling about with laughter, Lyarra Stark was self-contained and quiet. Lyanna Stark's hair had been fine and disobediently wavy, like that of the girl he'd noticed glaring at him earlier amongst Lady Catelyn's redheaded children. The girl who'd run off with Rhaegar and shamed Elia had been fair-skinned, but bore a spray of freckles over her nose and a hint of tan around her cheekbones.

 

Lady Lyarra Stark's skin was so fair it was as if it had never seen the sun rise upon it. Her hair was a hip-length cloud of nearly black curls as thick as marsh grass where they tumbled down the back of a fine, conservative northern gown of dark gray cotton over an undergown of white linen. Lyanna Stark's lips had been finely shaped, but thin. Lyarra's were full and sensual over a sharper chin and higher cheekbones and a more delicate nose.

In short, Lyarra Stark possessed all of her aunt's beauty, but it had been refined to a far greater level. Oberyn knew that the rumors about the girl's unknown mother being Ashara Dayne couldn't possibly be true. He was finally able to see where they came from, however, because on a purely physical level Lyarra Stark was the only woman he'd ever seen who might possibly have equaled the famed beauty.

 

"Thank you, Your Grace." Lady Lyarra spoke with a certain shaken caution.

 

Oberyn inclined his head to her, in no mood to speak further with his soulmate despite the spark of connection that had passed between them. For his part, Lord Stark was looking between them and then back at Oberyn's escort with a kind of slow-dawning suspicion.

 

"Allow me to make introductions." Oberyn spoke formally into the pause and stepped back. "This is Lord Tremond Gargalen of Salt Shore and mine own late father's brother..."

 

Oberyn introduced all of his primary party. Lady Jynessa Blackmont, who was heir to her family's lands and title as well as her son, Perros Blackmont. She was formidable woman who would officially serve as his bride's guide and teacher on the road back to Dorne, not that Oberyn mentioned it. With her was Lady Myria Jordayne, daughter and heir of Lord Trebor Jordayne, who would serve his wife as well.

 

Ser Deziel Dalt, the Knight of Lemonwood who had a fine reputation in the tourney circuit, if you ignored that he purposefully ran an opponent through with his lance two years before for insulting his paramour. Then there was Mors Manwoody of Kingsgrave, eldest son and heir to that title. As a man of middle years he'd brought with him his younger son, Dickon Manwoody.

 

Ser Arron Qorgyle made an intimidating visitor in his own right. His face was badly scarred fighting in the Usurper's War. A blow from a battle axe had left him with an empty right eye socket and his lips pulled up on that side in a perpetual grin.

 

Ser Ulwyck Uller was perhaps the only one of the party who had surprised Oberyn in offering to go. Though that wasn't right; Ulwyk hadn't asked or offered. The younger brother and heir of the Lord of Hellholt had insisted.

 

He'd expected his dear Ellaria's father to be angry. Her uncle's presence made him suspect loss might turn to some violence done against either himself or the recently legitimized Stark girl. Instead Oberyn had been reduced to spending two days in his cabin not long after they left Dorne because the man had tearfully explained that Ellaria's last letter had begged her kin to promise to look after and remain loyal to her love. More than that, the woman who'd held his heart like none other, who'd known and accepted him and gloried in the things others considered faults?

 

Ellaria Sand had sworn to her father and brother that she'd send a sign from her eternal rest that she was well, and that his love would always watch over him. Lord Uller and his younger brother, half-mad as that entire family was, had taken Oberyn's Mark as that sign. With tears in his eyes, Ulwyck had said how he was sure his sister had asked the Gods to intercede on his behalf so he would not spend his life whoring without taking the chance to risk his heart by letting someone close again. Oberyn could have told him that Ellaria would have been the last person to shackle him into a conventional marriage, but it did no good against the grief-forged certainty of the knight. Not to mention the fact that the idea left Oberyn shaken as well.

 

"Prince Oberyn, I am honored to host such noble guests." The sullen Lord Stark looked even more sour when there was creeping suspicion tugging his mouth crooked. "However, I cannot help but notice that you are the only member of your House present. Your brother's last letter led me to believe Prince Doran agreed that the wedding would be held here, and yet I see no groom."

 

"Indeed, how so?" Oberyn raised his eyebrows and held his arms out before pressing a hand over his chest.

 

"I - there is no other member of House Martell here." Lord Stark was now outright scowling.

 

"Keenly observed, Lord Stark."

 

Behind them there was a gasp and the littlest dark she-wolf let out a string of curses foul enough to satisfy any of the pirates Oberyn once sailed with. Lady Stark let out a soft cry of outrage as her eldest son clamped a hand over Arya Stark's dirty little mouth. One of the Lords behind the Stark family - a huge man with a hairy giant on his banner - began to guffaw loudly at the display.

 

"I will tolerate no trickery in this matter." Stark's growl was almost worthy of his house's symbol.

 

"Nor does House Martell offer you any." He replied back, his tone as sharp as Stark's was low. "Indeed, Lord Stark, I'm beginning to feel _unappreciated_."

 

Dawning horror washed over the man's face and Oberyn was all too happy to foster it by hooking his fingers through the cuffs of all four of the garments protecting his upper body. Pulling back the sleeves he bared the Mark for the Lord and those assembled behind him to see. Leaving the Lord of Winterfell to make strangled noises, he turned to the young Lady. Her mix of trepidation and confusion was causing his temper to flare after the stresses of the journey. It hadn't been all that calm since discovering he was going to have to be Bound to the niece of the unruly child who had led to his sister's doom.

 

"My Lady, have mercy on the heart of a poor second son." Oberyn couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice as he pressed a hand over his heart and then held it back out to her. "I am not so dismaying a husband, am I?"

 

"I've been offered worse." The words visibly slipped out of the girl's pale lips without her permission and her cheeks flamed red as her blush plunged down her neck and into the prudish confines of her gown.

 

"Well," Oberyn allowed philosophically. "That's a start."

 

* * *

  
  


"I must apologize for my youngest brother. Two is a very trying age." Lyarra felt the need to say as soon as she  stepped out into the chill air of the courtyard, holding stiffly to the arm that she'd been offered by the Dornish Prince the Gods were intent on binding her to.

 

Dinner had been composed of her father seething and Prince Oberyn essentially ignoring Lyarra in favor of baiting Lord Stark. Lyarra had just been relieved that the brief feeling of rage that had seemed to race across the back of her mind, unbidden and foreign, had faded into smoke and a whiff of guilt. The first look the man she was fated to marry had given her had been so full of loathing that she'd almost stepped away from him in shock.

 

"In my experience, all ages are trying." The Prince mused lackadaisical. "The toddling years are just trying harder."

 

Lyarra managed a wan smile at that, but was too embarrassed to do much else. Rickon had been brought down to dinner already in a foul mood after being forbidden from going to the kennels. He had hoped to play with the direwolf pups that had joined their family some weeks before. Shaggydog was often the entire focus of Rickon's attention, and as such was used as a way to guarantee his good behavior. Lady Stark had promised her son he could play with his pup before dinner, but that was a promise made before the Dornish Party had arrived two days earlier than predicted.

 

Feeling betrayed, Rickon had been in a foul mood even as he was settled into his mother's lap at the high table. He'd ended up fussy enough that he'd been passed to Robb, which had turned out to be a terrible mistake. Robb had been sitting on Lyarra's left for once, with Prince Oberyn sitting in a place of honor at Lord Stark's side and Lyarra sitting between her future husband and her closest brother. Robb's furious glaring at the Red Viper had been enough for the youngest of the family's redheads to guess that this was the man who was taking his oldest sister away.

 

With a howl of rage to do any wolf proud, Rickon Stark had launched a steaming hot potato stuffed with cheese, peppers, and ham through the air. Prince Oberyn's reflexes had saved him. Unfortunately Lord Gargalen had risen from his seat to approach the high table and speak to his nephew and he had caught the piping hot root vegetable right in the face.

 

Even with Rickon sent to bed without supper and their House's firmest apologies, the damage was done. The Lord of Salt Shore had laughed it off, the gray-haired man in his sixties wryly asking the Viper who Rickon reminded him of. Prince Oberyn had solemnly declared himself ignorant of any resemblance, and though Lord Gargalen's humor had broken the tension of the moment, the embarrassment remained.

 

"Father says Rickon has too much of the wolf's blood." She offered after a moment.

 

"I should like to see a direwolf." He mused and Lyarra licked her lips. “Is it true your family has come by a litter of them?”

 

"Yes, mine will come with me to Dorne." She offered, hoping not to hear a contradiction and was relieved when she got a smile instead, even if it wasn't particularly warm.

 

"They are welcome." He replied and slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, opening his mouth to say something and then pausing to frown down at where his hand was covering hers. "How are your hands possibly warm in this weather?"

 

"How are yours like ice?!" Lyarra asked instead, shocked to find how cold his fingers were. "It's not that cold."

 

With the automatic gesture of a Northerner with many younger siblings and a natural wariness of frostbite in the extremities, Lyarra's next movements were automatic. His hands were large, but long-fingered and graceful like her own. Despite that, Lyarra brought her own hands up and wrapped one of his in both of hers without thinking. He immediately snakes his other up to join hers, as if greedy for the warmth.

 

"If it is cold enough for snow to fall, then I declare it entirely cold enough to freeze." She shot him an exasperated look, forgetting for a bare second that he was a Prince and every other thing that had happened that day.

 

"If you find it so, then you shouldn't go outside without your gloves on."

 

Behind them, Septa Mordane cleared her throat creakily. Their chaperone for the walk back was not happy with the cold either. Five paces behind them the small, stout woman was huddled beneath her cloak and glaring at them both as if trying to summon the fires of Hell. Lyarra wished her great luck with the task; presumably it would take care of keeping Septa Mordane's delicate Southron hide warm and she'd likely get along well with the demons.

 

"I hadn't intended to go without, until you did. How are you not cold?" He sounded peevish.

 

Lyarra blushed and shrugged. "I don't get cold much."

 

The Prince turned them again and they began to walk at a more reasonable pace. They'd slowed and even stopped when she'd taken his hands, and Lyarra was berating herself for it. Ladies didn't act like that, and they certainly didn't nag men more than twice their age that they barely knew. Doing it when they'd been a bastard up until recently and the one they were speaking to was a Prince only made it worse. Lyarra lapsed into silence, frowning down at the neat pavers beneath her feet as she imagined how quickly the Septa would tattle to Lady Stark. A lecture of some sort on courtesy and respect for rank was sure to follow.

 

"You've been very quiet tonight." He observed, and Lyarra was surprised when he went on in a tone of voice that was rather gentle. "I apologize if I am at fault. I did not mean to frighten you when we were introduced."

 

"I was not frightened." Lyarra insisted.

 

"I am as aware that that is untrue as you would be if I said I was not angry at the time." The statement was blunter than she expected after listening to the man's verbal dance around her father at the high table. "As… unexpected as it is to know such, you have my humblest apologies and my assurances that it is unnecessary. You are entirely safe, my lady. We do not hurt little girls in Dorne."

 

"Do you see me as a little girl?" She countered, embarrassed.

 

"When I've four daughters older than you, it is hard not to."

 

At least he was honest, she decided. Lyarra could respect him more for not hiding his bastards than she would have if he acted ashamed. Fondness and pride leaked through every syllable as he smiled slightly at the mention of his children. Septa Mordane's small noise of displeasure spurred Lyarra to speak further.

 

"Lady Stark said that you have eight daughters?"

 

"Seven." His answer was abrupt and Lyarra felt a stab of pain that she wasn't sure the source of.  It was either her own, at realizing what she'd just unearthed or his and she'd caused it. Either way, Lyarra swallowed and tried to say something.

 

"I'm sorry. The plague was horrible."

 

Lyarra was left regretting that she'd inherited her father's way with words.

 

"Winterfell appears blessed to have experienced it little." The slight warmth of his tone from earlier, when he was trying to reassure her, was gone.

 

"Maester Luwin thinks that foul vapors can't travel as fast or as far in cold air." She offered weakly. "The North is seldom hit as badly by plagues as the South. Goatsbane is also more common here."

 

"Indeed." Came the wry, cutting reply. "Lord Umber had an interesting song about that."

 

Lyarra winced at that. Several of the Mountain Clans had long ago discovered that outbreaks of the rash that goats with Goatsbane developed could be cured by rubbing raw unions and a weak lye solution on the affected areas. Rather than waste the livestock, Clan Wull, Clan Forester, and others simply treated the goats. As a result most of the clansmen had been naturally inoculated by proximity.

 

It just so happened that some enterprising minstrel had invented a song that suggested a much greater proximity between the mountain clans of the North and Vale and the goats they kept, than was proper. Lord Umber found the song hilarious. The Wulls had been less amused. There'd been a bout with practice swords out in the courtyard after dinner that had turned into a mass of fists and drunken yelling between the two lords, further adding to the chaotic image the carefully orchestrated political dinner had turned into. In the end Lord Umber and Lord Wull had laughed over their various battle wounds and passed a jug of mead between them once the dust settled, so at least no lasting grudge had come of it.

 

"We were still very lucky." Lyarra finished lamely, looking away. "My heart would break if I lost any of my brothers or sisters."

 

"Then I am glad you were spared." Came the stiff, but sincere reply. "I would not wish that loss upon you."

 

"Were you at the Tourney at Harrenhal, my Prince?" Lyarra blurted out into the awkward air around them, and pushed on when she felt the muscles in his arm clench. "I know you looked - I know you saw my Aunt Lyanna when you looked at me. Everyone does. I'm sorry I caused you pain… and I'm sorry I keep making it worse."

 

The pause that followed was longer and nearly took them to the gate that would lead him out of the courtyard and into the guest house. While Septa Mordane went to her own room, Lyarra turned towards the family quarters. When he spoke, however, his voice was slightly lighter.

 

"I accept your apology." The older man turned, and in the moonlight she found the lines on his face less apparent and the silver in his hair invisible. She realized, with a shock, that he was a handsome man, if a bit lean and fine-featured for Northern tastes. "You inherited your father's gift for words, didn't you?"

 

"Do you mean that I always find the worst words possible, or none at all?" She greeted his wry tone with a snort, forgetting to be perfectly ladylike. "If so, then  _ yes _ ."

 

He left her with a perfunctory kiss on the knuckles and a graceful bow. Lyarra decided she'd never been more grateful for a chance to seek her bed. She only hoped that Gwyn had fallen asleep waiting for her after all of her hard work in the kitchens. If her Southron foster sister was awake Lyarra wouldn't get any sleep until Gwyn had picked apart every word said, event witnessed, and rumor heard. After the day she'd had, Lyarra really hoped to escape that.

 

* * *

  
  


"In the last four moons, my eldest daughter has become a maiden Marked and bound to a fate half a world away from hearth and home. My wife is furious that her own religion legitimized that daughter. I've had to reorder my books to incorporate a larger dowry I will yet have to negotiate with that man. And now, my youngest son assaulted the third most powerful Lord in Dorne with a root vegetable at mine own table." Lord Eddard Stark looked over the rim of his tankard at Maester Luwin.

 

The Maester had joined Ned in his solar after the meal was over and Ned had made sure that his daughters are all safely in their rooms with the doors barred.

 

"Yet, on the positive side, Lord Gargalen was willing to be amused by the throw, your heir handled the incident between the Greatjon and The Wull brilliantly, and young Lord Greyjoy distracted several of the younger and more hotheaded guests handily with his tales of the entertainment to be found in Wintertown." The aged Maester mused, his tone consoling. "It is not so bad as that, my Lord."

 

"Oberyn Martell is to marry my daughter." Ned gritted out and watched as the older man had nothing to say to that. "I thought not."

 

"The food was spectacular."

 

"Aye."

 

Ned's stomach had been too twisted over the revelation that his daughter was to marry the infamous prince to enjoy it, but Lord Manderly had nearly cracked the bench he was seated upon when he went for his fourth plate. Ned groaned and raked a hand through his beard, aimlessly staring down at his desktop, fixed on a letter from his only living brother.

 

"My Lord?"

 

"I've just realized that the least stressful duty I've had in the last four moons was executing a Night's Watch deserter."

 

"You've had a rough fortnight and more." The maester acknowledged, then stood, his knees popping with the movement. "With your permission, my Lord, I'll retire. The Dornish party will likely have need of my services in the Ravenry tomorrow morning."

 

"Aye, sleep well."

 

If an aggrieved mutter about vipers followed the Maester out the door, well, Luwin was too polite to comment upon it.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four - 297 A.C.**

Lyarra woke up when Gwyn slipped out of their shared bed. The younger lady was more of a morning person than she was. It was, Lyarra understood, the product of a daily schedule that involved baking. Baking required getting up before the cocks crowed and usually left her nodding off not long after sunset.

"Don't roll over and go back to sleep." Gwyn's Westerlands accent was sharp and crisp this morning. "We need to talk."

"Do we?" Lyarra groaned, poking her head out of the covers and then pulling a face. "I don't need you to choose my clothing for me."

"Yes, you do." Gwyn had laid out a dark violet gown that she'd made for Lyarra before being exiled from the Lady's solar.

Gwyn embroidered in a different style than anyone else in the keep. She used a hooked needle with a wooden handle, and it was as much like crochet as it was sewing. The Westerlands girl also included a lot of beadwork and sequins in her embroidery that both Lady Stark and Septa Mordane dismissed as gaudy.

Lyarra herself tended to favor simpler dresses. Despite that, she could hardly turn down a gown her friend had spent so much time making. Besides, even she had to admit it was beautiful. The gown's sleeves were tight to the elbow, then flared wide with the bottom edge trailing down to nearly the hem of the wide skirt. Though the dress itself was a fine plum-colored wool, it was lined with pale gray linen.

It was the neckline that Lyarra objected to. It fell entirely off her shoulders and across her chest to show the tops of her breasts. Lyarra had never worn such a dress before and felt herself turning red at the thought of doing so when she knew all eyes would be on her.

"I can't wear that all day." Lyarra tried again as she watched Gwyn take out one of her new corsets.

Also sewn by Gwyn, the set of stays had more boning than Lyarra usually favored. It was also made of black satin lined with cool cotton. Sansa had been talked into delicately embroidering tiny pale blue flowers around the deep dip in the cleavage and in a trail down the front. The smallclothes were even worse. They were also pale blue and bordered by little frills of crocheted lace where they were held on by ribbons that tied over each hip.

"You're not going to wander around covered from neck to wrist." Gwyn shook her head. "Your dress last night was noticed. When one of the laundry maids was seeing to the linens in the guest house, she overheard Ser Deziel Dalt talking to Lady Jynessa Blackmont. Both thought you looked prudish."

"Better prudish than like a harlot." Lyarra frowned.

"You'll wear it and you'll like it." Gwyn replied implacably. "If they think you naive and ashamed of your body, Lyarra, they'll exploit it as a weakness."

"Why?" Lyarra scowled. "It's not as if either I or Prince Oberyn have a choice in this. It's not a match that was made or even wanted by our Houses."

"Which is even worse because it means you have no leverage!" Gwyn shook her head and turned a pleading expression on Lyarra that she wasn't prepared for. "Lyarra, you know nothing of the South. Marriages - marriages can be as bad as wars."

"Prince Oberyn told me last night that he wouldn't hurt me." Lyarra tamped down her reservations in face of the fear she saw in her friend's eyes. "Gwyn… you've barely talked to anyone in the last fortnight. When you did, you were drawing blood with your tongue. Why now?"

"Things are changing." Gwyn said quickly. "I'll explain later. I can't talk now because Alasane overate last night and is in no fit state to help Lady Stark this morning. Please wear the dress."

Alasane was Lady Stark's personal maid. She was a tall, stout woman a few years older than Lady Catelyn. Lord Hoster Tully had assigned her to his daughter when she'd flowered and she'd been with her since. Knowing exactly how displeased both Lady Stark and Gwyn would be with the young blonde serving the Lady of the House, Lyarra caved.

"Fine, but you'd better explain." Lyarra grumbled. "Now help me into the torture device."

"It makes your tits look spectacular."

Gwyn's attempt at reassuring her led to Lyarra groaning loudly and blushing brighter than the sun on her wrist. Letting Gwyn lace her tightly into the black stays, the older girl submitted to having the purple dress put on afterward over a single petticoat tied at her waist. She refused to let anything be done to her hair. If half the castle were going to leer at her breasts then they could accept that her curls refused to be have themselves. Wrapping the fringed pale gray shawl around her shoulders firmly, Lyarra headed down to breakfast. There were a few longing moments spent looking at all of the carving projects on her table though. She didn't delude herself that she'd have time for her favorite hobby anywhere in the near future.

* * *

Oberyn Martell had a well-developed sense of humor and less shame than his brother would have preferred. Normally he would have laughed off his current situation, but he found himself sour enough in response to it that he wasn't up to the task. Instead he decided to brood.

Before the Gods had shackled his manhood with the Mark on his wrist, some idle excitement in the presence of a beautiful woman wasn't surprising. It was almost a requirement. Had he sat beside a woman as beautiful as Lyarra Snow and not gotten at least a twitch out of it, Ellaria would have begun to ask if he was feeling well. Right before she decided to help him. Recalling the warm joy and arousal that came with the filthy, beautiful things she would whisper in his ear about what they both would do to their latest object of passion hurt. He would never experience that again. He would never even hold Ellaria again. Only the darkness of her crypt would embrace her as she served as her own effigy.

Now, however, he was more than a little irritated to find that his manhood had decided to stir because of a glimpse of Lyarra Stark's cleavage. The girl wasn't even showing that much skin, but the sight of her creamy shoulders and the bare tops of her breasts were enough to have him half-hard inside the heavily lined breeches he had on. The hints of youth still clinging here and there to her face and her complete innocence were enough to cool his momentary ardor, however. He hadn't bedded a girl of four-and-ten since he was four-and-ten.

"I hope the night treated you well, my lady?"

Oberyn had no desire to spend his life making the child miserable, however, and pushed his ambivalence away as he slid into his appointed seat next to his Marked wife. The wedding would not be many days away, he would at least know something of her if he could get the girl to speak. The girl blinked at him once, but answered readily.

"It did, Your Grace."

"I'm glad to hear it."

Oberyn went on breezily, realizing from the girl's expression that she was uncomfortable and trying to push past that. If he wanted to get to know her at all before he wed her, and he'd prefer if he did, then he had to get her to speak. He had a sinking feeling this wouldn't be easy. He'd attempted to reassure her the night before. Now he believed that he had failed.

Oberyn still seethed a bit over being bound to a soulmate who looked so much the irresponsible brat who'd turned the world upside down, but the idea of frightening a maiden so turned his stomach. The girl had done him no wrong. His quarrel was with her father.

"May I ask for your plans for the day, my Lady, and if I could trouble you for some of your time?" He asked with a sideways smile that earned him a slightly suspicious upturn of her lips for his trouble.

"My time is yours, Prince Oberyn." She was formality itself, before she added. "I had planned to spend the morning working on my trousseau in Lady Stark's solar. I'm afraid that the preparations I had begun before I was Marked were not sufficient for a wife of House Martell, and I must beg your forgiveness while I work to amend that."

Oberyn frowned at the practiced words and noticed her carefully not looking past him. Leaning back around in his seat he turned to look past Eddard Stark's empty chair to where the Lady of Winterfell was now sitting. Her youngest son was nowhere to be found, but the next-to-last boy was present. He leaned over to direct his words at the auburn-haired woman.

"I hope the night treated you well, my lady?" He repeated himself in precisely the same tone he'd used a few moments before and watched her lips thin.

"It was passable, Your Grace."

"I'm glad to hear it." He replied. "May I ask for your plans for the day, my Lady, and if I could trouble you for some of your time?"

Now she was outright scowling at him.

"Forgive me, Your Grace, but I was not raised to favor the word games it seems are enjoyed at the court in Sunspear." She spoke directly, her chin up and her expression cautious and haughtily courteous in equal measure. "I beg your pardon for my ignorance, but what is the purpose of repeating yourself?"

"None at all." He helped himself to the spiced small beer on the table before availing himself of some fried ham and a hot beet salad.

Did no-one in the North eat fruit for breakfast? No wonder the woman's expression was so sour. He'd have to speak to Lord Stark on the benefits of a diet rich in fruit. It would highly improve the lady's disposition.

"Do you _often_ find amusement in such conversation?" He smiled gamely at the question. Lyarra Stark sat beside him like a coiled spring, ready for some disaster to happen now that he was speaking to her lord father's wife.

"No. However, as I dislike pointless conversation, I thought I would simply go directly to the source of my betrothed words. It seems more convenient than expecting her to parrot after another for their piece of mind, don't you think?"

Lady Stark's blue eyes flashed with anger, but he had to admire her poise as she replied.

"I would be remiss in my duty to my House if I did not direct its daughters in matters of courtesy and prepare them for marriage."

"Truer words." Oberyn agreed cheerfully and turned back to Lyarra, content his point was made.

He felt a rush of pleasure at the appreciation in the gray eyes, nearly as dark as his own. He also felt even less well-disposed towards Eddard Stark. He knew how bastards were treated north of the Red Mountains. By those standards, Stark and his Lady wife had treated Lyarra Stark very well when she was still a Snow.

Oberyn was Dornish. He was also the father of eight girls, grieved by the loss of Tyene or not, and the thought of even one of his daughters thinking they had to silently accept such treatment left his blood boiling. Perhaps the Gods meant more than whatever children awaited them. Oberyn had saved more maidens than he'd deflowered, despite his reputation, and if it was his lot to teach this controlled young she-wolf how to be a little wilder, he could accept it more readily than being breeding stock for Fate's design.

"My Lady, when you have finished breaking your fast perhaps there will be time for us to go see your direwolf?"

"Of course, my Prince." She answered and turned to her dish of porridge.

* * *

Robb Stark left the practice yard sore. He'd been sparring against Ser Rodrick when Prince Oberyn had entered the yard. The man had been walking beside Lyarra at the time, and Robb had lost his concentration. The result had been being knocked on his ass in front of several of his father's bannermen, a large number of Dornishmen, and Theon.

Though, in his defense, how was he supposed to ignore the sight of Lyarra smiling shyly up at the Red Viper while holding Ghost in her arms? The direwolf pups were fully weaned now, and had they not had so many guests, would have been sleeping in their rooms. Unfortunately the schedule for the pups had been delayed by the wedding and its myriad preparations.

Still, as cute as the little white she-wolf was with her oversized paws and wet black nose, Ghost wasn't Lady. Sansa's direwolf was as friendly as anyone could want and almost as docile as any pet. Ghost was almost as aloof as she was standoffish. Still, as he'd watched, the spaniel-sized pup's tail had waved beneath Lyarra's elbow while the Viper scratched between the pup's ears.

Robb felt slightly betrayed. He vowed to talk to Grey Wind about it. His direwolf was also a puppy, but Robb felt himself understood by the ball of gray fluff in a way that was hard to explain. With any luck Grey Wind would chew on his sister and tackle her until Ghost came back to her senses and at least growled at the interloper a bit. The Viper needed reminders of the dangers of mistreating the pack.

He hadn't the time to share his concerns with the direwolf though, as Gwen informed him of a vital meeting occurring in Lord Stark's solar. The auburn-haired boy headed there quickly to learn of the matter at his father's hand.

"Robb?"

"Father."

Robb bowed carefully with a tray in his hands and a slight smile on his face. Father had left him completely unaware of the fact that Lord Gargalen and the Prince were both closeted in his solar to discuss the dowry and wedding contract to be made between their houses. It hurt to be treated like a child at his age. It also left him unsure if he'd ever be ready for his role. It left him worried that he wasn't being prepared properly.

'Thanks, Gwyn,' Robb thought sarcastically to himself as he prepared to invite himself into the proceedings. "Mother noticed that Lord Gargalen didn't break his fast. She didn't want the courtesy of our house left in doubt."

Truth be told, his mother had mentioned that many of the Dornish hadn't broken their fast. Which was also when he found out that his mother hadn't slept well the night before and had chosen to come down early and see to the kitchens herself while assigning Gwyn other duties. The spread of cold meats leftover from the feast had been wonderful in Robb's opinion, but Gwyn had cornered him later and told him that the Dornish only ate a light breakfast.

He wasn't sure where she got that information. Robb had learned not to ask questions like that more than a year before though, when it became apparent that Gwyn would get silent and withdraw if questioned too closely about some things. At Theon's urging he'd eventually accepted that the wide range of gossip she turned up was too valuable to question into nonexistence. Gwyn had been slow to trust anyone beyond Lyarra, after all.

"You're a lucky man in your wife, Lord Stark." Lord Gargalen smiled affably as he took in the large platter of sliced pears, apples, and the ewer of cream to go with the bowl of blackberries.

"Indeed."

How Prince Oberyn could make a single word sound insinuating, Robb didn't know. Theon did the same damned thing, but without the practiced grace or easy confidence. He decided it must be a talent some people were just born with.

"Come in and join us, Robb." Lord Stark waved him in with an expression that suggested Robb's visit may have prevented something violent. "As my heir, you should know how these things go."

Robb's first lesson was that ' _these things_ ' didn't go well. His father, the Prince, and the Lord of Salt Shore had been closeted for two hours. In that time it seemed very little progress had been made.

Their guests had been given a small trestle table that sat nearby his father's desk. A great sheaf of legal documents sealed with the sun and spear of House Martell had been placed on that table. Beside it sat a blank, lined ledger and a locked casket of the kind that contained seals. The aging Lord sat comfortably upright in his seat beside the table while Prince Oberyn lounged in his seat opposite Robb's father with one indolent leg thrown over the arm of his chair.

Robb's father had neatly organized piles of documentation out on his own desk. Judging from his father's expression they hadn't gotten to the point of using it. That was his father's pained look at being forced to engage in small talk or word games.

"How go the negotiations?" Robb's tone was pleasant to try and get the tense air to move a little.

"They swim along like a fish in the desert." Prince Oberyn replied mockingly.

"We've reached a slight impasse." Lord Gargalen's tone remained calm and urbane.

"I realize that mutual defense is a standard practice between allied great houses. I would never fail to come to the aid of my daughter and her children. What I object to is the wording."

"You object to backing the right and true ruler of Westeros?" Prince Oberyn's expression was surprised. "I fail to understand why."

"I object to vaguely wording it as _'right and true'_ without mentioning the King's House."

"And yet royal houses do change, do they not?"

Robb looked to the Prince's uncle, hoping to see some kind of moderating influence. Instead he saw the placid, polite blankness of the man's face carry on as if nothing had changed. There would be no allies here for House Stark, Robb realized, so they'd have to stick together. Moving to draw a chair up beside his father's at the edge of the great desk, Robb decided to employ a tactic he used on his younger siblings.

"If you've reached an impasse on mutual defense, why not set that aside and discuss something else?" Robb suggested.

He knew his father's stubbornness wouldn't let him easily leave be any perceived danger to his best friend's crown. It wouldn't matter how likely it was that the Viper was just baiting him. His only hope was to change the subject and get things moving on another level.

"Indeed." Lord Gargalen agreed. "Your heir's a wise young man. Mayhaps we should discuss dowry and bride price?"

"In Dorne a lady is not _chattel_." Prince Oberyn snorted derisively before his uncle spoke again.

"What my nephew means is that the Lady Lyarra is Marked by the Gods as his intended and comes to us as his partner in life. Just as her House is expected to see that her dowry reflects the respect accorded to her husband's house and their love for their daughter, the bride price shows House Martell's gratitude for the blessing you've bestowed upon us. A portion of it is also set aside to allow her financial independence, as it will provide much of the monies to run her private household."

That startled Robb, but it also sent a hint of relief through his rigid spine. If Lyarra had independent funds, she could at least always assure her own comfort. His sister didn't have a duplicitous bone in her body, but if Dorne was unbearable she might also use the money to escape and come home. Of course, that should be avoided at all costs given that it would likely start a war between Dorne and the North, but it was a comforting thought.

"That is good to hear." Eddard Stark looked relieved and rifled about a bit before finding several sheets of paper bound with string. "These are the initial estimates I have made for the Lady Lyarra's dowry."

Prince Oberyn took it, but negligently passed it to Lord Gargalen. It was a gesture that was sure to infuriate his father, Robb noted. He was also fairly sure that was why the Prince did it.

"You are most generous." Lord Gargalen reflected.

" _All_ of my children are incredibly dear to me."

Robb held in a smirk at how his father made that sound like a terrible threat, but he misliked the gleam in Oberyn's black eyes when the prince looked up from the cup of spiced wine he'd poured himself from the fruit tray.

"Dorne appreciates your generosity in the matter of lumber." Lord Gargalen went on, flipping through the papers slowly, his own dark brown gaze as sharp as his words were smooth. "We're also pleased to see such a large amount of iron ore included. On other matters I would have further discussion. Sunspear is more formal than what I have seen of Winterfell."

"Aye, the South often is."

Robb nearly winced at his father's sour tone. Seeing Prince Oberyn hold a hand out for the paperwork felt like the herald of some kind of challenge. Robb sat back and waited, wondering how his father would deal with it.

What followed was the worst headache of Robb's life. Prince Oberyn lived up to the half of his reputation Robb had heard less of. He seemed more than intelligent enough to have forged a partial maester's chain, and Robb found the man's ability to do complicated sums in his head annoying. Lord Gargalen ended up serving as the Prince's scribe and Robb picked up the same position for his father as the two men fell into debate and negotiation that bordered on argument.

Every detail of the dowry was attacked and deconstructed. Dorne was a nation wealthy in jewels, gold, spices, and exotic flora. The North was rich in lumber, furs, and an entirely different ecology. The question became then: what did they need from each other?

Lord Stark's face flushed with embarrassment when had to refuse to lift the amount of silver expected. Mining was hard where the ground was constantly frozen and the people disinclined to search for wealth that would give you food or warmth. Robb couldn't help but be embarrassed as well when he realized that an unpaid loan to the crown meant that Lyarra's dowry wasn't arranged the way it ought to be for such a beneficial marriage. It also suddenly left Robb worried for his other sisters.

"You can field that much lumber on such short notice?"

Prince Oberyn's surprise was genuine and Robb gave his own wolfish grin at it as Lord Stark nodded.

"Aye, and it's laid by and seasoned."

"I think that would work nicely as a replacement for the usual allotment of hard currency." Lord Gargalen agreed. "Given that our Maesters agree that the upcoming winter will arrive soon and likely be difficult, we are also happy to accept the allotment of furs."

"Despite having already augmented it somewhat." Prince Oberyn japed and flicked his fingers at the fur of the cloak draped over the back of his chair and Robb couldn't hold in a snicker.

The Prince looked up, his smile something Robb couldn't quite describe as the Prince gave him a slow wink. Lord Stark cleared his throat loudly. It sounded rather like a growl.

"We shall consider the matter settled then." Prince Oberyn sat up in a smooth gesture that totally belied the fact that his leg had to be asleep after so long in such an unnatural position. "I would move on to Lady Lyarra's household. Shall she have northern attendants? I couldn't help noticing that your house has no fosterlings."

"That's not so." Robb spoke up, feeling his face heat.

It had been Gwyn who'd first mentioned it. She wouldn't speak of her life before coming North, at least not in any detail. The knight's daughter had said how unusual it was to be the only foster child in Lady Stark's household though. Robb had asked Maester Luwin about it, and had her words confirmed. Normally Great Houses had a half dozen or more children fostering from their bannermen. It was also the best way, other than marriage, to create bonds between kingdoms.

Still, despite having loved his years in the Vale, Robb couldn't miss the fact that his father hadn't fostered anyone but Gwyn and Theon. Nor did Theon really count, as he'd come to them as a hostage first. The fact that Robb saw the older boy as his brother changed little of the circumstances of his arrival. As for Gwyn, Robb knew nothing of how that situation had come to pass, but he knew it was unusual. His father had full guardianship of Gwyn now, from controlling the modest dowry lodged in the Iron Bank to choosing her husband.

"Indeed, are we counting hostages?" Prince Oberyn asked cheerfully. "I noticed you seem close to the Ironborn heir last night, Lord Robb."

"Lord Theon is my ward as much as his life is bound by his father's word, and I have seen him educated as such." Lord Stark replied, his tone indicating the subject was closed as he jumped forward in defense of his son.

"I was speaking of my mother's ward." Robb replied stiffly, his own pride offended.

"I didn't see another young Lady at the feast last night." Lord Gargalen's surprise alerted Robb to the stiff way his father was seated and made him wish he hadn't spoken up.

"Nor was she introduced with your household." Prince Oberyn all but purred. "Is the lady in some sort of trouble?"

"Ladies under my roof do not get in trouble."

"Lady Gwyn Parren." Robb filled in, fearing the offense in his father's voice.

"Of House Parren of the Westerlands, mayhaps?"

_Well, shit_ , Robb thought. Obviously he should have kept his mouth shut and scribed. How could he not think of the fact that Gwyn had spent two years in Casterly Rock itself? Who had more reason to hate the Lannisters than the Red Viper?

"Aye." The Lord of Winterfell answered, this time his tone sarcastic. "Lady Gwyn and your betrothed are particularly close. You should consider her for part of Lyanna's household, if she's willing."

"A generous offer I will make to the young lady personally as soon as we are introduced." The Red Viper's smile was such that Robb expected to see fangs pop out from amidst his even, white teeth. "Would one of your other daughters care to make the journey as well? It is traditional, and would give the Lady Sansa or the Lady Arya experience in another court."

Robb decided that his mother was right about Dorne. If it produced Princes like this it had to be an awful place.

* * *

Gwyn was late, undoubtedly detained by Lady Stark. Bran had told Lyarra earlier that she was caught talking to one of the Dornish men-at-arms, and was getting a lecture for it. Lyarra could only hope that her friend's often lacking patience made an appearance. If not, she was in for who knew what punishment given the tension in the household.

"Choose a blade you can wield, Arya, that one's longer than you are tall." Lyarra huffed as she looked up to where her little sister was peering over the practice blades. Lyarra had brought them out to the little used courtyard where the entrance to the crypts and the Old Tower stood.

Gwyn had wanted privacy to talk about things she'd overheard. Lyarra wanted Robb to know anything that she did, and Robb could hardly spend a long time in the room Lyarra and Gwyn shared without it drawing attention. Equally, when Lyarra told Robb she wanted to met him, Arya and Bran had overheard. So now what had originally been Gwyn and Lyarra talking had become Gwyn, Robb, Lyarra, Arya, and Bran.

"You should have brought more. I'm too old for one of the _baby_ blades!"

Despite her protests Arya picked up one of the hardened wooden practice swords that the children used in training and left the regular blunted blades that Lyarra had brought along for herself and Robb alone. Lyarra picked up her own weapon and swung it a few times. She directed the way that Arya stretched out and practiced her footwork as she relished being able to move again in the tunic and long trousers she was wearing.

They'd made their way through two spars before Gwyn appeared at the gate. Lyarra's heart leapt when she saw the large basket that her friend was lugging along. Bran gave a whoop from where he was partially up the side of the old tower, and Gwyn threw a rude gesture at him.

"Sorry." Bran apologized after he'd gotten back to the ground and jogged over. "I forgot we were sneaking."

"Why weren't you at dinner again?" Arya complained. "I had to sit by Theon and he was busy drooling over Lady Myria."

"Considering what Lady Myria was whispering in his ear while they broke their fast, I'm hardly surprised." Gwyn complained right back as she dropped herself down onto the piece of canvas Bran gallantly spread over the ground for all of them. "Thank you, Bran. Theon's so indiscreet. That woman's ten years older than him and from one of the wealthiest families in Dorne. She's interested in what she can drain out from between his ears, not his legs."

" _Eww_ , Gwyn!"

Lyarra shoved her friend over. Then she told her, at length, how she never needed a mental picture like that again. Gwyn just glared and fussed over the state of Bran's hands, spitting on a handkerchief and cleaning them off while Arya scrubbed her own palms on the seat of her pants.

All other sins were momentarily forgotten when the towel came off the top of the basket. A tightly stoppered jug contained a warm, spiced posset that smelled like heaven. Mushroom and chestnut pasties sat steaming in a smaller basket. Sweet cream filled buns that were a speciality of Gwyn's sat in a small golden heap. Each one was the size of both of Lyarra's fists. As they settled in to enjoy their snack in the moonlight, all of the children who should have been in bed held their conference.

"Robb's still in your father's solar trying to work out your dowry." Gwyn was the first to speak. "I wasn't at supper because I snuck out to Wintertown."

"What?!" Lyarra sat forward while Arya perked up. " _Really_? Take me next time!"

"No." Gwyn huffed and turned to Lyarra again. "You know how Lady Lyra's been irritable around Lady Stark lately? I've found out why."

"I thought it was because Mother was Southron." Arya scowled defensively. "As if Mother's not a Stark after birthing all of us. She's had more Stark in her than anyone!"

Lyarra reddened as Gwyn burst into giggles at what Arya said. Arya and Bran frowned, not getting the joke, and Lyarra was left to glare at her friend until the other girl caught her breath and went on.

"You know how the smallfolk in the south have been sending ravens north trying to buy weirwood saplings to replant their godswoods?"

"Father's been talking about it. He combed through the Wolfswood to send a few to the Reach." Bran nodded. "I think it's great. There's no reason that the Faith and the Old Gods should fight one another."

"Of course there is. It's called tithing and the North doesn't do it, but the South does." Gwyn shook her head.

"Isn't that where the lords and the smallfolk send money to the Faith to build septs and keep septons and septas and such?" Bran frowned and Lyarra couldn't help grinning at her brilliant younger brother.

"Yes, Bran. What does that have to do with Lady Stark? Or the fact that people are complaining about the sept being here in Winterfell for the first time in a decade?"

Gwyn answered her question quickly, her voice lowered and her tone shaken. Lyarra reached out and squeezed her friend's hand. She didn't know what left her friend always feeling vulnerable, but she wanted her to know that she was safe.

"You know how proud everyone here is about the goatsbane inoculation. They're proud that it was old knowledge and a vision from the Old Gods that saved so many and will keep another Grey Plague outbreak from ever happening again." Gwyn rushed to speak. "No-one will sell the weirwood saplings. They're not giving away many, but they're just sending them down for free."

"Aye, father issued an edict. He won't have our weirwoods violated by the greedy." Lyarra frowned.

"Word in Wintertown is that Lord Holster Tully's been selling weirwood saplings." Gwyn whispered. "They're saying that he's getting them from his daughter in Winterfell."

Arya's cursing was loud and offended, and left Gwyn putting her hands over her face in exasperation at the noise. Lyarra calmed her sister down, but couldn't keep her own indignation at bay.

"Lady Stark might be harsh at times, but she would never betray Father." Lyarra insisted and her siblings seconded it.

"I know." Gwyn wrung her hands. "I heard it from one of the tavern girls I sell moon tea to-."

"You weren't raiding Maester Luwin-."

"I promised to never do that again!" Gwyn sounded genuinely hurt. "Lyarra, I wouldn't lie to you."

"Note, you wouldn't lie to _Lyarra_." Arya snickered and Gwyn pointedly moved the basket out of reach.

"Look, what matters now is the rumor. It's stirring up bad feeling amongst the bannermen." Gwyn hurried to go on. "I heard it first from one of Lord Wull's guards this morn after I saw to Lady Stark and was looking for you near the kennels. I've been trying to figure out where it's come from, but I lost track of the rumor at the brothel. That's another problem - all of those whores are foreign, so what are they starting rumors like that for?"

"Anything else?" Arya asked after they'd all stopped eating and drinking due to the tense silence that followed.

"One of Alys Karstark's maids was eavesdropping at Robb's door when he spoke to Theon earlier." Gwyn groaned, tugging on the bright golden braid hanging down against the brown fur of her cloak. "I caught her and threatened to embarrass Lord Karstark by revealing it in front of everyone in the Great Hall. She told me everything to avoid punishment, but I don't see how the whole castle won't be talking about it tomorrow."

"Talking about _what_?"

"Apparently your Lord Father gave the crown a loan to help buy food for King's Landing during the worst of the plague." Gwyn whispered, her expression pained. "It's making getting your dowry together difficult, and will do worse for your sisters. The Red Viper offered to negotiate terms on your dowry in return for the names of the men who killed Princess Elia and her children."

There was a moment of silence before Arya spoke, her voice scornful.

"If Father _knew_ , they'd already be _dead_."

"Father would never let someone so dishonorable live!" Bran was quick to agree. "He'd have executed them there in King's Landing and sent their heads to Sunspear!"

"With Lord Tywin's army surrounding him?" Gwyn's voice was a cold rasp and Lyarra realized with a shock that her friend was violently shaking. She hadn't seen Gwyn do that in a year.

"Gwyn-."

"Moot point." Gwyn was quick to say, stifling her shaking by pressing her hands together in her lap.

The storm that had brought them the summer snow of a few days before had faded that day. The sun had come out and the ground was brown again, with only a hint of white in a few deep shadows around the wall. It wasn't even cold enough to freeze water.

"According to the maid, Robb told Theon that King Robert personally refused to punish them and then swore Lord Stark to silence on their names." Gwyn said quietly. "Your father told the Prince and Lord Gargalen that."

"Of course he did. Father's a good, honest man."

"A lie speaking of ignorance would have profited you better, Lyarra."

"I have no wish to profit from a lie." Lyarra glared at her friend. "Gwyn, you _know better_."

"I know marriage isn't a song and that there are some things you can never forgive." Gwyn shot back, her hands shaking again. "Look, just - Lyarra, you've got to be _careful_. If you - you don't want to get dragged into _anything_ involving the Lannisters."

"Wasn't your mother a Lannister?" Bran asked almost gently and Gwyn huffed.

"We're the poor relations. The Lannisport Lannisters are only good as confidential servants and disposable cutthroats." Gwyn laughed shakily, but then shook her head and changed the subject back to the weirwood rumors.

Eventually they finished most of their snacks and drank all of the posset. Lyarra and Gwyn hovered over the two younger siblings as they all slipped back into the family quarters, quiet as mice. None of them noticed the lean shadow watching their progress, or had been in a position to see Prince Oberyn casually leaning against the old gate weaving a web of leather thongs around the haft of a red spear in the moonlight. His presence went unnoticed as he nodded away a Winterfell guard who would have stumbled over them on his rounds, or his smile sent a wandering Bolton retainer in search of some other abandoned place to bed the giggling scullery maid on his arm. As quiet as any slithering thing the Red Viper listened and watched in the night.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyarra and Robb talk, Lord Stark and Lady Stark get some information, and Oberyn proves that Ned Stark isn't the only Good Father in Westeros.

**Chapter Five - 297 A.C.**

 

It hadn't been long after Lyarra's friendship with Gwyn developed that the bastard girl had noticed that little escaped Gwyn's ears. The Westerlands girl liked to joke about it. She said that she had to listen closely because once something got more than a hundred paces away, she could only see it as a moving blob of color. She also tended to brush it off as a simple result of being in places like the kitchens and the laundry where servants spoke freely. Gwyn liked to joke that there were no secrets from the servants in any castle. She maintained that there was nothing special about her ability or her drive to know what was going on around her.

 

Lyarra had spent long enough watching Gwyn struggle to find some sense of safety to know that none of this was particularly true. She simply thought that prying into the younger girl's past was cruel. There was no honor in hurting a friend, or anyone weaker than you. Lyarra accepted that Gwyn was sharp-tongued and jumpy just as Lady Gwyn Parren dismissed that Lyarra was a bastard as unimportant.

 

Legitimization aside, Lyarra felt that she would always be a bastard. Just like Gwyn had never quite answered why she seemed to feel marriage  _ itself _ a danger, Lyarra knew her friend would never pick at her own insecurities. Acceptance was the foundation of the deep friendship both girls had managed to build.

 

Sometimes, however, Gwyn's absolute refusal to directly approach either Lord or Lady Stark with anything she overheard was inexpressibly  _ aggravating _ . Lyarra knew that her Lord father and his wife needed to know about the rumors. She couldn't even begin to think of how dangerous the outlandish stories about Lord Hoster Tully selling weirwoods could be. Then there were the rumors about the loan that he father had given the crown, which could seriously affect the reputation of House Stark.

 

"Wake up, lazy-guts!"

 

Lyarra's gentle, singsonged cry as she rocked her closest brother by the shoulder didn't have the effect she'd hoped for.

 

"Gooarwey." Robb Stark muttered into his pillow, swiping backwards with one arm out of the covers, covered by the dim light coming from his fireplace and Lyarra's single candle.

 

"I have a spider and I'm not afraid to use it."

 

Gwyn's heartless threat produced a much more gratifying reaction, though Lyarra did not approve. First of all, there was no excuse for the cruelty that was flinging a spider on someone's sleeping face. Second of all, if Robb thought a spider actually was crawling on him, he'd make enough noise to bring the very walls of Winterfell down. If that happened, how were they to explain why they were in his room in the wee hours of the morning before the sun rose?

 

"For fuck's sake, Gwyn!" Robb came fully awake with a barely audible, strangled exclamation.

 

"Right, I'm off to the kitchens." Gwyn grinned at Lyarra. "Call me if you need to actually throw a spider on the slugabed."

 

"Heartless Southron wench!" Robb threw at Gwyn quietly as he sat up.

 

Clutching his furs to his chest and blinking at his sister, Robb looked simply awful. There were dark circles under his blue eyes and his auburn hair was totally disarranged. Lyarra sighed and sat Ghost down on the foot of the bed with Greywind. Both Direwolf pups happily began sniffing and tumbling over one another.

 

"I'm sorry. I always forget what she's like when she's waking up other people." Lyarra apologized.

 

"Did she  _ really _ have a spider?" Robb asked, his eyes narrowed. Lyarra shrugged.

 

Both knew that Gwyn was as likely to just threaten something and then laugh it off as she was likely to carry through. Whether or not she had the spider at the time was the question. Personally, Lyarra thought it was simply bad luck that Robb was afraid of something Gwyn seemed to like. Though why Gwyn liked spiders, of all things, Lyarra still couldn't figure out.

 

"How can she stand touching those things?" Robb shuddered. Lyarra grinned as he voiced her own thoughts, though she wasn't as bothered by insects as Robb.

 

"She says they're good housekeepers." Lyarra grew serious. "Robb, we need to talk."

 

What followed was a quick summary of everything her brother had missed when he couldn't make their secret meeting the night before. He was just as outraged as the rest of the Stark children at the rumors of Lady Stark selling weirwood saplings. Robb was also  _ furious _ to find out that Alys Karstark had set her maid on him and been eavesdropping in the family quarters.

 

No-one but the family should have been able to get close enough to listen at Robb's door, period. That the maid had managed it meant that there were guards who would have to answer for the lapse. That she'd overheard and then repeated such things was another mark against their household staff as well as the servant and the girl who employed her. Lady Alys Karstark, Lyarra noted with a mix of sympathy and pride in Robb, had just lost any chance of becoming the next Lady of Winterfell.

 

Maybe he'd give more thought to Lyra Mormont. Lyarra was growing rather fond of the daughter of the Lady of Bear Island. While Lyra wasn't quite as fierce as her mother, Maege, she was ready with an axe and had pride in herself. Robb would never find such in a Southron wife.

 

"The idea that we can't properly dower you, Sansa or Arya's insulting." Robb huffed as he got up and dressed behind a screen. "Father knows his duty. King Robert may be his best friend and people might have been starving, but he  _ wouldn't _ beggar the North to give the crown a loan."

 

"I know that." Lyarra found herself biting her lip anyway. "I'm more worried about the Dornish taking advantage of his pride…"

 

"Prince Oberyn seems more interested in baiting father's temper than skinning the North." Robb's reluctance to voice the almost-compliment was obvious. "We've reached a good compromise with more iron ore, lumber, and a few other resource to even out the lack of ready silver. Did you know the Dornish didn't even know what peat was? They were also prepared to be very generous where the bride price is concerned."

 

"Bride price?" Lyarra had never heard of it before.

 

"Aye. Apparently in Dorne, when a woman weds there's a dowry which goes to the bride's husband to show the match is valued. There's also the bride price, which is split between the bride's family and the bride herself. It's meant to help support the bride's household with some independence once she's a wife, and to honor the fact that the bride's family is giving up a daughter."

 

Lyarra thought about that for a few minutes. She couldn't help liking the idea on a visceral level. Her entire life had been spent painfully aware of how much she had to rely on the kindness of her father and, in the future, her brother in supporting her. As a bastard she had very little status, and she knew Lady Stark wanted to see the back of her as soon as possible. Without her father and brother supporting her, Lyarra would have had to take whatever husband she could get as soon as she flowered. Or rather, that was the reality that had given her nightmares before the Mark appeared on her wrist and sealed her fate.

 

"I like it."

 

"I thought you would." Robb smiled as he came out from behind the screen and sat down on the bed beside her, idly petting Greywind as the pup crawled into his lap. Ghost demanded off the bed so that she could drape herself over Lyarra's coiled legs on the floor. "Still, you shouldn't worry. We're short on silver and jewels to drape you in, but the family isn't suffering in any way. The loan was a modest one, by the standards of Great Houses."

 

"I'm not sure what that would entail, as I was never taught to run a great house." Lyarra snorted, and then wished she hadn't.

 

The shortfalls of her education had always been a bone of contention between her brother and his mother. Lord Stark saw all of his children educated well in terms of lessons with Maester Luwin, and his daughters had to learn the arts of courtesy with Septa Mordane whether they liked it or not. These lessons were vague and broad, however, with Lyarra spending more time with Maester Luwin than anyone else. As a result she was extremely well-read, but Lady Stark had never taught her more than the basics of running a household. She could balance the books splendidly, as she knew she was good with sums, but she knew very little of managing servants or creating projections for supplies needed for more than a dozen or so people.

 

"You'll need to learn." Robb breathed out, then shot her a crooked, slightly pained smile. "You're not the only one either. I let the Viper get beneath my skin several times and watched him do the same to father. Every time it made us say more than we intended, and I could tell that was the infuriating, arrogant snake's objective. I saw him with you and Ghost yesterday, Lyarra. You shouldn't be alone with a man like that. He didn't try anything, did he?"

 

"As no less than two sets of Gods have appointed him my husband, Robb, I think being alone with him is unavoidable."

 

"Now you sound like Gwyn." Robb whined. "Don't  _ do _ that, Lya. You know what I mean!"

 

"He didn't try anything inappropriate."

 

Lyarra caved and reassured her worried brother, standing up to sit beside him and curl an arm around his shoulders while he did the same. It was still a shock to realize how much taller he'd gotten than her, and how wide his shoulders had grown.

 

"Really?"

 

"All he wanted to do was talk, and to introduce me to his household without anyone there to interfere." Lyarra explained. "He was everything chivalrous, if you ignored the rampant sarcasm, and Ghost likes him."

 

"I'm starting to question Ghost's taste." Robb replied sourly and looked down at where the little white direwolf was obviously contemplating nibbling on the toes of his boots. "I'll need to talk to father and mother as soon as possible about the rumors."

 

"Gwyn won't get involved."

 

"I know. I'll talk to Theon. He's volunteered before. He can pretend he was talking to the whore while, um - he can pretend the girl in the village told him."

 

"I know what a brothel is, Robb." Lyarra was amused. "Or have you forgotten that Gwyn's father owned a couple? She brought a ledger from one to our household account lessons with Septa Mordane once, just to hear her shriek."

 

"I  _ can't _ believe Lord Tywin would permit the second-in-command of the Lannisport Guard to own brothels. What about his knightly vows to protect women?" Robb muttered, then breathed out. "Do you think it would be pushing it if I had Theon claim to catch the maid too?"

 

Lyarra thought about it. Duplicitousness didn't come naturally to her at all. She wasn't bad at cyvasse, though, and two years of sharing a room with Gwyn meant learning a few things.

 

"I think you should claim to have overheard someone catching and disciplining her." Lyarra offered only reluctantly. "Pretend you thought it was Lady Stark. If you start the conversation like that, they'll want to know everything and it doesn't leave them asking you who you heard since you didn't realize you were mistaken."

 

"My sister is a genius!"

 

Robb mussed Lyarra's hair and she swatted him for it.

 

"Lackwit." The insult was nothing but fond. "Let's go spar. I want to hit something."

 

"Hit Theon. I didn't get to bed until a few hours ago."

 

"Stop whining. Theon's too lazy to spar at sunrise."

 

" _ Fine _ ." The Heir to the North groaned and looked at Lyarra with naked relief. "At least your sparring clothes are decent. Did Gwyn make that horrible gown from yesterday?"

 

Lyarra groaned and accepted Robb's promise to have a stern talk with her friend as a good, if likely ineffective punishment for Gwyn's stuffing her into yesterday's gown.

  
  


It wasn't often that Oberyn was shocked or delighted. In fact, delight was beginning to seem like the experience of another lifetime. It seemed almost a betrayal to feel it. Elia had owned tranquility and peace within his heart; it had passed away with her murder and he hadn't known it since. Surely delight had gone with Ellaria and Tyene, turned to stone and burned away by fever.

 

Oberyn was a man of great passions. He preferred action to words and found only agitation in mournful grief. Besides, mournful things reminded him of Rhaegar. He was naturally inclined to turn sorrow into anger just to spite the Silver Prince's memory.

 

Besides, he hadn't seen such a sight since the last time he'd seen Obara and Nym spar. In the center of Winterfell's training yard stood the Heir to the North along with Oberyn's Marked wife. His betrothed was wearing an oversized, plain tunic in Tully blue that had likely once belonged to Robb Stark over a pair of fitted buckskin breeches that most certainly had not. He took a moment to mourn the fact that the tunic covered her down to her thighs, and then concentrated on the match itself.

 

Robb Stark was talented, but obviously not battle-tested. Oberyn watched him with the eyes of a man who'd founded his own sellsword company before he'd seen five-and-twenty, a knight famed in his homeland for his skill with sword and spear, and a man who'd trained half a dozen squires. Robb Stark had considerable skill. It was the sort that came from a man – young or not – who applied himself to all he did with the whole of his concentration.

 

Lyarra Stark, however, was a natural. It was the difference between genius trained into existence and the kind of genius that was born. She ducked and dodged, relying on a style that countered her brother's strength with lightning fast reflexes and flexibility. Given that Oberyn's own style had some similarities, he found himself naturally pleased to realize that his unwanted, unexpected child bride was going to be a deadly wife. It would make getting his girls to tolerate her much easier.

 

It also brought one of Oberyn's hands up to squeeze Damian Sand's shoulder as he leaned in towards his friend.

 

"Go get the practice spears."

 

Ser Damien grinned and bowed briefly before going to accomplish his task.

 

Grinning, Oberyn moved into a better position to observe the match. While he watched the evenly matched young wolves sparring in the half-light of the rising sun, he considered the information he'd gleaned the night before. For once, his inability to sleep alone had benefited him.

 

The knowledge that Holster Tully, or someone pretending to be him, might be selling the North's sacred trees was very interesting. A year before Oberyn would have  _ rejoiced _ at the knowledge. He would have done everything he could to undermine Stark's much vaunted reputation as an honorable man, or to at least drive a wedge into the man's marriage and alliance with the Riverlands. Now doing so would decrease the value of his own marriage. 

 

Oberyn had spoken to Doran and outlined several possibilities where his marriage might be of benefit in their much-disrupted quest for vengeance. The simplest reality was that Lyarra Stark could become a hostage for the North's assistance, or at least neutrality, in whatever war would have to occur to unseat the Usurper and end his line. There was a cruel satisfaction in knowing that he could do to the North what the Mad King had done to his family.

 

There were many other levels, though, and the opportunities had only grown more plentiful as Oberyn continued to bait and observe the Usurper's Dog and his heir. The Young Wolf clearly adored his bastard-"twin". Lord Stark was unusually fond of his children, to the point where he was reluctant to give his daughters up even in the most auspicious of alliances. With finesse, it might even be possible to draw the North further into the matter. The unpaid loan from the Crown was particularly promising, as was Stark's clear disgust over having his friend wring an unworthy vow from him.

 

Just thinking of Stark's guilt-laden admission sent Oberyn's blood boiling and left him aching for a target. The man  _ knew _ who Elia's murderer was. He  _ knew _ what had been done to her and her children. Still, however, he held his much sainted honor above any kind of justice. The fact that he'd given his word meant everything to him. It didn't matter that he ardently claimed that his friend had drug it from him unwillingly by threatening to detain him from his quest for his own sister.

 

Oberyn pushed the bloodthirsty drive for an answer away. He would get his names one way or another on this journey. Whether Stark had meant to or not he'd supplied Oberyn with another potential avenue. One he didn't imagine would be difficult to leverage.

 

Unfortunately, his eavesdropping had put him in the distasteful place of needing to help Lord Stark and his pointlessly judgmental wife. If the North was destabilized, it would be of little use to them. With his marriage out of his hands, Oberyn wasn't going to give up the advantages that did come with it. Nor did he have any great desire to crush the spirit and family of the girl on the other end of the Mark on his wrist. He was already getting the occasional dull flash of emotion across it. Oberyn understood grief. The idea of spending the rest of his life weighed down by someone else's was not attractive.

 

For all of Doran's plans they needed the Starks more secure rather than less. Oberyn was developing a few of his own that wouldn't work if he corrupted his potential allies. He watched the grinning redhead nurse his sore ribs while Lyarra apologized for catching him so hard with her elbow.

 

Oberyn came to a decision. He would work only with the younger generation. It would spare him from helping the rigid fool who'd sired the boy and present him another chance to at least get to know his young wife better.

 

"Beautifully done, my lady." Oberyn called, bringing his hands together lightly in quiet, appreciative applause.

 

Both of the youths before him jumped, but Oberyn was impressed to see their practice swords come up in a proper defensive posture.

 

"Thank you, my Prince."

 

Lady Lyarra's response was perfectly polite. Her eyes, on the other hand, were grey pools of caution. She suspected mockery. Oberyn thought of his own girls and felt a hint of displeasure stir that his wife would look like that in response to having what was obviously a Gods-given talent observed. Obara's talent hadn't just been honed by her father, but by the best teachers that the Martells could provide.

 

Looking at the furtive expressions on both the long faces before him, Oberyn guessed that Lyarra hadn't received any instruction save her brother's for years. When she was a tiny, skinny tomboy of a child with skinned knees, it was likely dismissed as a cute preoccupation. At a certain point, bastard or not, they would have decided that the Lord's daughter couldn't be seen doing something so unladylike.

 

"You've woken early, Prince Oberyn." Lord Robb stood up straight and stepped forward after he offered Oberyn as brief a bow as politeness mandated. "I hope your quarters were comfortable. You were not too cold, were you?"

 

"My reception in Winterfell is everything I could expect and more." Oberyn replied with a smile he knew was impossible to interpret. "However, I will admit to feeling restless. The last year of my life has been one of action, and long negotiations do wear on one's patience, don't they?"

 

" _ Aye _ ."

 

Robb Stark packed a world of meaning and frustration into that word.

 

"In truth, having seen you spar, I was hoping for a match." Oberyn went on genially, laying his trap with a pleasant tone.

 

Suspicion warred with the boy's pride in his skill. It hurt to see that the lady didn't even consider the fact that his offer might have been for both of them. In the end Robb Stark's pride won. His posture was already as ramrod straight as could be desired, but his blue eyes gleamed at the compliment offered. The Red Viper was considered a fearsome warrior across the Free Cities as well as Westeros. He'd just complimented the lad's form and asked for a spar. That wasn't an offer that most fourteen year old lads could resist.

 

"I would be honored, Your Grace." The boy actually smiled a little. "Truth be told, we have no practice spears, however. Everyone here favors the sword, save Lady Lyra Mormont and she wields an axe."

 

"I haven't sparred against anyone using an axe as their favored weapon for years. I shall have to ask her if she can spare the time later." Oberyn bowed towards Lyarra then. "And you, my Lady, will you favor me with a match? Once you've rested from besting your brother, of course."

 

The heir looked slightly offended but Lyarra Stark's surprised smile, Oberyn found, was well worth the effort. It changed the lines of her face, bringing out her sharper chin and cheekbones. When she smiled she looked less like her Aunt and her eyes lit up brightly.

 

"I would be delighted."

 

" _Perfect_."

 

Oberyn clapped his hands together and then rubbed them, letting his callouses rasp and hiss with the movement.

 

* * *

  
  


Ned Stark felt like a decade had just dropped off of his life when he looked out the window of the quarters he'd shared with Cat for nearly half his lifetime.

 

"Ned, what is it?" She sidled up next to him and gasped.

 

He settled his hands on her shoulders quickly and squeezed.

 

"'This just a spar, and likely a valuable lesson at that." Ned reassured her as he watched the Red Viper's wooden practice spear hook behind his son and heir's legs and send Robb tumbling to the hard-packed earth of the yard. "See?"

 

Prince Oberyn was grinning as he offered Ned's son his hand and demonstrated how Robb's footwork had failed him. In the same motion he had the lad raise his own tourney sword and showed him how to counteract the lightning-fast movement that had put him on his arse. It took four more tries for Ned's son to successfully manage the block. When he did it was only to face another hole in his defense, the spear poised over the bridge of his nose, in the next bout.

 

The infamous man was more than gracious, however, and seemed genuinely happy for the first time since Ned had laid eyes on the princely pest. The Dornish knight who tended to shadow his prince most often was there as well. Several other Dornish figures, including the Lord of Salt Shore stood around the yard. At some point Ser Rodrick had joined them, and the Greatjon and Lord Bolton as well.

 

"Ned, they say he poisons-."

 

"I don't trust the man, but he wouldn't harm a child." Ned replied gruffly. "I've had to put up with enough of his doublespeak to know why he hates me, Cat. I can't even blame him. I'll always hate those creatures in King's Landing who stood by and watched while my father burned and my brother choked to death. I'm just relieved that it will keep us safe from everything poisoned about him save his tongue."

 

"You're  _ sure _ ?"

 

"It's just a lesson, and one that'll likely do Robb good." Ned rubbed a hand over his face. "Lord Gargalen was shocked we don't have more fosterlings."

 

Lady Catelyn's lips pressed thin.

 

"We both know that the North doesn't send its children to Winterfell because it fears I will  _ corrupt _ them to my Southron Faith and ways."

 

"Cat, I'll find out who's besmirching my religion and your name." Ned breathed out and felt his lips curl slightly. "I'm calling a meeting of the bannermen present this evening. I want to get this out into the open since they're apparently gossiping about it. I'm going to charge each with a survey of their weirwoods, looking to see where the poaching is happening. While they're doing that, I'll question the women in the village Theon got the rumor from."

 

"It will quiet them a lot, to have you include them in the investigation."

 

Ned wrapped her in his arms and drew her against his chest, kissing the bright red hair that had been splayed over his chest that morning. He'd been grateful to postpone any meetings that day. It had been too long since he'd just been able to lay abed and talk to his wife, forget their other activities.

 

"It's my name that they've attached to it, and House Tully’s honor that's been besmirched as well as yours."

 

"Aye."

 

The anger in her tone was as clear as river water; he could see right through to the pain at the bottom, and the sense of never being accepted or belonging.

 

"It could be worse." He tried for levity.

 

"How?"

 

"Your father could actually be selling weirwood saplings."

 

She shot him a look that suggested his joke wasn't funny, then her lips turned up as she buried her face in his neck to hide the dark amusement they were sharing.

 

"I'm more afraid of Edmure getting caught up in something stupid." His wife confessed. "He's young and his letters are still filled with complaints about father trying to rule his life, and talk of tourneys and friends. He needs to settle down, especially with father's health not being what it once was. A lot could slip by both of them given Edmure's carefree nature and father's illness."

 

"I don't suppose your father might soften and allow the Blackfish back to the Riverlands?"

 

"Uncle Brynden would have to apologize."

 

"So, not bloody likely?"

 

"The Dornish will bathe naked in the Whiteknife first."

 

Ned snorted and looked out the window, every muscle in his body clenching and freezing as he groaned.

"What is it?" Cat's head shot up in alarm as she did the same, only to be followed by an appropriately ladylike, but exasperated exclamation.

 

The rest of their children had found their way down to the training yard. Sansa lingering to the side, blushing and smiling sweetly as one of the handsomer Dornish knights turned and bowed to her, rising from the piece of log he'd claimed as a chair to offer the seat to her. Their other children got right into the thick of things.

 

Bran was left at the side to corral the six rowdy direwolf pups that had been brought out with them all, but his eyes were shining as he looked at the yard so packed with knights. Meanwhile Arya's eyes widened as she watched a match between the Prince of Dorne and his future wife. It went differently from that against Robb. Not because of any lack of training or skill on her son's part, but because of the fact that the Viper and the young girl he was facing didn't have diametrically opposed styles.

 

Robb wasn't used to fighting a grown man with a different weapon, a longer reach, and a greater height who was that much faster than he was. Lyarra was much shorter than the Prince, and she obviously had no idea what to do when facing a man with a spear. What she had were reflexes on par, or nearly so, with the man she was facing. The result was the same; Lyarra landed hard on the ground each time. The method was different, as the Viper didn't bother to try and trip or trick her, and instead used his greater strength against her to wrench her weapon from her hand or tumble her over several times.

 

" _ Arya _ !"

 

Ned chuckled weakly at his wife's gasp and held tight so she couldn't pull out of his arms when Arya jumped into the spar. Holding her own wooden practice sword in her hands, she stood over her fallen sister. Ned had no idea what she yelled, but had a feeling that if he found out he'd be obligated to punish her. A pity, Ned imagined that it was nothing he didn't want to say to the infuriating man.

 

Instead of laughing at the girl as Roderick or any of the others would, however, the Prince stepped away. Then, to his shock, Ned watched Prince Oberyn toss the practice spear to one of the knights watching the match and swing Lyarra's tourney sword up into his own hand. Arya's jaw dropped open, but she quickly scrambled forward to meet him, her own little sword held at the ready and her expression alight.

 

"Ned, I'll say nothing on the matter of your bastard, but my daughter is not going to shame herself in front of the Bannermen and visiting roy-."

 

"Arya's young enough to be excused by those who care, and it'll please the Mormonts and the Northern Clans to see her fight." Ned replied, keeping his wife in his arms. "Peace, Cat. Lyarra's not the only one who's the image of my sister, and Arya's display will do our children more credit with the bannermen than all of our words could."

 

His wife stilled in his arms, but remained standing rigid with displeasure as they watched the next bout. Robb hovered protectively and Lyarra watched the Prince closely as he sparred with the young she-wolf. Ned found he had nothing he could complain of, for the man was a natural at training children. He moved slowly to telegraph many of his moves on purpose, giving Arya a sense of success, but he didn't let her win. Instead he walked her through fifteen solid minutes of sparring, correcting her stance, taking her weapon four times, and laughing off the fact that she kicked him in the shins and fought dirty while he was doing so. Each time Oberyn Martell did something to show Arya how she could better use the play weapon in her arms had it been a real blade.

 

The match stopped when Lord Gargalen stepped forward and began to clap. Arya looked up from where she had landed on her rump after one long, wiry leg had swept her feet out from under her. Her glare melted away into a grin at whatever the man said. She held the wooden sword she'd managed to hold onto despite her fall and the Viper's grab for it in triumph. Then the Greatjon walked forward and snatched Arya up, tossing her into the air to what had to be squeals of delight. Robb turned and bowed to one of the nearby Dornish knights and the man gestured around, clearly asking for a match later.

 

Lyarra stepped forward and Ned's heart nearly broke at the brilliant smile she directed at her Marked and intended husband as she nodded towards where Arya was bragging with Ned's loudest bannerman. Ned watched with his stomach clenching as the man bent down and kissed her fingers. Ghost pelted across the yard on overlarge feet, the spaniel sized she-wolf pup sniffing enthusiastically at the Prince's boots once it had greeted Lyarra. Ned felt both better and worse when he saw that the often standoffish little white she-wolf would allow the man to stroke her ears.

 

"Robb's suggestion that we leak Sansa and Arya's dowry settlements was a good one." Cat said after a long moment, pride in her voice.

 

"Aye."

 

Ned's good mood fled with the memory of the humiliating rumors that he was also going to have to contend with along with the investigation into the supposed theft and sale of their sacred trees. As if he would beggar his family and his keep to help Robert. He loved the man as much as any of his brothers, but he knew the King's proclivities where money was concerned. His friend had always been extravagant. The loan had been nothing the North couldn't bear, it merely meant that they didn't have as much ready hard currency as he might have liked.

 

"Our girls  _ won't _ suffer for this marriage, Cat, I swear." Ned reassured his wife, whose expression made it obvious she needed to hear it. "No, they won't go out with a Southron dowry measured in silver and jewels, but they'll have a dowry any Northern lord would bleed to have. My talks with the Dornish haven't ended with Lyarra's dowry."

 

That got Cat's attention and he grinned at the shrewd blue eyes that looked up at him. He'd liked to joke from the moment they'd wed that his wife was smarter than he was. In this, however, he felt he knew his homeland and people well enough to reassure her doubts. It might disappoint some of her hopes for more Southron grandchildren, but surely she knew that would be bad for their family in the future. His wife lived by her family's words: Family, Duty, Honor. Cat would understand.

 

"They have a food surplus in Dorne that needs to be addressed and the half of the bride price coming North will be incredibly generous. With winter coming, that will reassure my bannermen more than a ship's weight in silver." Ned explained. "I'll let it be known that I want Northern marriages for the girls as well, and that a lot of their dowry will be in lands, as I hold claim to all of the unclaimed lands between bannermen. The Starks haven't offered land in dowry for a hundred years, and no-one save maybe Bolton faults me for keeping King's Landing from starving. Robert's throne would have been in doubt and we could have been caught in the middle of another gods-be-damned war."

 

He could feel his wife fighting with some disappointment. Ned waited patiently to see what she would say.

 

"Sansa's always wanted a Southron marriage. She dreams of knights and tourneys and handsome, gallant men."

 

"Aye." Ned allowed, his voice quiet. "Look how well that turned out for Gwyn's sister."

 

Cat went stiff and then pulled away from Ned entirely to glare up at him.

 

"You can't judge all of the south by the Westerlands or Dorne for that matter." She argued. "There are many good, honorable young lords in the Riverlands or in the Reach. Eve the Stormlands are full of kind men who'd make our daughter a wife. Nor should you forget that King Robert's spoken of binding our families together before. You know my father has hopes in that regard, and I'm surprised you don't as well."

 

"If I could meet Robert's boy, I might." Ned acknowledged. "It would handle the loan tidily. I could write it off as part of the dowry and the crown could write off part of its debt. Robert needs to retrench badly."

 

"You should go south to King's Landing." Cat smiled. "See your friend again. Sansa could go, and I would accompany you. We could visit my family and Robb could remain. Benjen's visiting for the wedding, isn't he? Why not leave Robb as the Stark in Winterfell to get a feel for his responsibilities with his uncle at his side to guide him? You know the King would be overjoyed to see you. He's wanted you to visit for years."

 

"Let me get this mess settled first, and the rumors about the weirwood saplings." Ned frowned as an idea occurred to him. "I should track down the parties I sent to take the trees south, as well. If they were dishonest it might be that the very trees I sent are being sold under your father's name to hide their actions."

 

"I may not have married the handsomest Stark brother, but the Gods know I married the smartest." Catelyn grinned and Ned felt his cheeks stain red despite his age and the beard that mostly covered them.

 

"Don't say that where Benjen can hear." Ned replied wryly. "He'll call you on the untruth of it and your reputation will never be the same."

 

Cat's laughter was sweet in his ears as Ned stole a kiss.

 

* * *

  
  


Oberyn was in a remarkably good mood, perhaps the best since the Mark appeared on his wrist, as he went to seek out Lord Stark's solar with his uncle at his side and his usual guards flanking him. His bride was more than she appeared to be. The dour facade had fallen away once he'd gotten the girl out into the yard and away from the expectations of her stepmother. Likewise, Robb Stark had lost a great deal of his father's glowering disapproval of Oberyn's existence and his people once he'd met him in the yard.

 

"It's a crying shame that girl doesn't own real steel." Lord Gargalen huffed.

 

"I trust you're speaking of the Lady Lyarra."

 

"Lady Arya as well."

 

"I'll be amending Lady Lyarra's lack, I can assure you, Uncle, but the Lady Arya isn't a part of my household."

 

"Shall you wait until we're back in Sunspear?" He asked and Oberyn shook his head.

 

"She deserves a northern blade, and there's a good smith here. I've some jewelry to give her that I've been holding back. I'll have a piece or two broken down to make the weapon beautiful enough for the lady who wields it."

 

The older man raised his frosted eyebrows and Oberyn snorted.

 

"I was annoyed to find her the image of Rhaegar's mistake. I'm not blind to her beauty." He argued. "And she's not an abrasive, cocksure thing like the girl at Harrenhal was. I don't want to be bound in misery, Uncle, I'll find my way to good ground with my wife."

 

"I'm just relieved you can say the word 'wife' without a condemned man's expression."

 

The other man drawled in Doran's precise tone of mocking support and Oberyn snorted loudly. One of the advantages of the Martell nose; it made snorting loudly quite easy. Having the nose was something Oberyn had resented as a child. He'd grown into the family's most famous feature with time. Eventually he'd even grown to enjoy teasing his princely brother that he looked more a Martell than Doran. It was something he hadn't bothered to even try saying to his brother in decades. Responsibility had long ago crowned his brother with a majesty that Doran wore like a cloak. He looked a Prince in a way few rulers ever would, and perhaps the most savagely satisfying thing of the current political situation was seeing his brother's quality finally recognized.

 

"Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria would like to know if you are speaking to Stark today on your wife's behalf." His uncle went on. "They're enjoying their time in Lady Stark's solar, as neither has worked on a trousseau since before Lady Lyarra was born, but the girl's education is wanting. She'll get eaten alive in Sunspear if she's not prepared, and she needs her household."

 

"Oh, I've already found at least part of it." Oberyn grinned. "The girls would love Arya Stark, don't you think?"

"It's traditional for a young bride to bring sisters into her own household, and it would be an invaluable experience for Lady Arya to experience life in a Southron Court."

 

Lord Gargalen was nothing if not politically astute and Oberyn was still chuckling at his answer as they walked up the stairs to Lord Stark's solar. He knew his uncle well, and though Doran had inherited much of his temperament from the man who'd been the most powerful noble in Dorne for nigh on half a century he knew that the man's passions ran as deep as his own. Lord Gargalen had given them six cousins to play with as children, all born relatively close together. Of them only his two sons yet lived, as a fire in the Maiden's Quarters at Salt Shore had devastated the house some twenty years before.

 

The Lord had never remarried after his wife had starved herself to death following the fire. He'd remained polite, urbane, and still enjoyed life. Despite that, inside Lord Gargalen's heart was a hole shaped like his daughters just as he grieved with Oberyn and Doran for their lost sister. The man would have offered to foster Lady Arya Stark himself before he let marriage to some rapacious oaf from north of the Red Mountains crush that girl's spirit and talent. Had his own two sons not been near Oberyn's age and already wed he'd have likely suggested a marriage as well, but his grandsons were either too young or, in the eldest's case, betrothed.

 

"Your Grace, Lord Gargalen."

 

Ned Stark greeted them with a nod and a brief bow that Oberyn returned floridly and his uncle with proper restraint and respect. They were shown to their seats where the now-expected tray of fruit and light wine rested. Oberyn grabbed a fresh pear and bit into it as he draped himself over his chair and watched his uncle pour three goblets of wine. Robb Stark appeared a few seconds later, freshly scrubbed and in finer clothing. Oberyn tossed the lad an apple by way of greeting and got a brief, surprised smile from the lad for it. Oberyn weighed what he could get out of the boy if he had a real change of heart, then watched Robb Stark's face shut down into something more appropriate as the lad put his age and his enjoyment of the sparring yard away in favor of a more appropriate mindset for a negotiation.

 

"I believe that we've settled the dowry, save for the usual defense agreements." Lord Stark opened with his usual bluntness and Oberyn sat up.

 

"Yes, though I'd like to put that aside for a moment to speak of my bride herself."

 

Both the Starks went stiff.

 

"My daughter is a fine girl-"

 

"I couldn't agree more." Oberyn purred over the man's offended tone, unsurprised Ned Stark had assumed insult and amused by it almost as much as watching the man's face redden at the insinuation in his tone. "She is not, however,  _ Dornish _ ."

 

He received a cautious nod from the man in reply.

 

"I am certain that the Lady Catelyn ensured only the most  _ proper _ and  _ beneficial _ lessons for her husband's bastard." Oberyn sneered. "Fate has seen fit to make Lyarra a princess, however, and I would have her raised up as such."

 

Ned Stark's red face went pale with amazing speed and one of his eyes actually twitched. While Oberyn had expected him to be displeased by the sally about his wife's uncharitable treatment - by Dornish standards, at least - of the family bastard, he hadn't expected a reaction like that. Lord Stark moved to try and cover it with a laughably false coughing fit, but the only one who believed it was his son. Oberyn chose to go on and see if he got any further such reactions, but he did not.

 

"My wife will be chatelaine of Sunspear itself as my brother usually keeps court at the Water Gardens. With my family's recent grief over the Princess Mellario and Princess Arianne, Lady Lyarra's position will be the highest of any woman in Dorne until mine nephew, Quentyn, weds. Lady Lyarra needs to know all she can of Dorne, its traditions, culture, and Houses. Lady Jynessa Blackmont has long been an ornament and credit to Doran's court. Likewise Lady Myria Jordayne is a lady of considerable accomplishments."

 

"I was under the impression both had joined my wife and daughters in Lady Stark's solar daily since their arrival."

 

"They have." Oberyn replied dryly. "A room largely composed of unwed young women sewing and chattering is not the best place for detailed political lessons. Lady Lyarra has expressed to me that she doesn't much care for sewing herself, nor is there any point in arranging an extensive wardrobe for her here when she will need an entirely different mode of dress in Dorne. I would have Lady Stark do as she will in regards to Lyarra's trousseau and instead concentrate on preparing her for her new role."

 

"I see." Ned Stark replied, measuring his thoughts behind his gray eyes as he pulled on his beard. "You're correct, Your Grace. I believe my daughter would be better served with more preparation, however, I do not want my daughter separated from all else. These are the last days she will spend with her family. She is especially close to her siblings, and I'm loathe to separate them so."

 

All of Oberyn's humor fled.

 

"Oh, I have some understanding of that."

 

Robb Stark winced and even his father looked like he regretted his words. Oberyn just smiled sharply and turned talk back to the dowry. He decided vindictively that he and his uncle would become so involved in the particulars that no-one would break again for food or the privy until dinner. Well, the privy would depend on his uncle. Exceptions had to be made for men over a certain age.

 

* * *

 

"What happened to your arm?"

 

The words popped out of Lyarra's mouth before she could think to properly greet Prince Oberyn. It left her to drop into a belated and embarrassed curtsey in front of Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria. Ghost, who was standing by her skirts, cared nothing for etiquette. Instead the little white she-wolf surprised her by wandering forward and hopping up to put her front paws against Oberyn's thighs and beg for attention. It was friendlier than her other half often was with some of her siblings, and Lyarra felt a sudden wave of affection for the man as he waved them all negligently to their feet and leaned down to ruffle the fur around the pup's neck with a bright grin.

 

"I believe I have found a valuable ally in Winterfell that I was not expecting." The Prince grinned. "Lady Stark, may I escort you to the family quarters? I find it a strange irony that I came to wed you, and yet spend more time with your father and brother."

 

They'd been lent the use of a lower room in Maester Luwin's turret for their lessons. Lyarra had gone in with a great sense of trepidation and left with real pleasure. She'd always enjoyed reading and learning. The library was ever a refuge from Septa Mordane and Lady Stark's disapproval.

 

While what the ladies taught her of Dorne was nothing like her usual lessons in sums, history, and other matters, it was fascinating. It also left Lyarra feeling a little less overwhelmed and frightened by the idea of wedding a Martell Prince. Yes, she was looking to face a life that was going to contain entirely too many unfamiliar things and ideas. She wasn't going to enter it ignorant, though, and her husband seemed intent on actually helping her prepare for it rather than solely using her as a weapon against her house. Lyarra had been afraid of that at first.

 

"Your Grace, may I ask you a question?"

 

"You may ask me as many as you wish and I will endeavor to answer, but I would ask the same favor of you."

 

"It's no secret why you mislike Father." Lyarra pushed forward, looking straight ahead despite the hand she had on the crook of his arm.

 

Her husband had shucked his outermost layer in the sparring yard. With the summer storm clear along it had brought, he hadn't been wearing the four layers to begin with. Despite that, the thick, rich patterns woven into the orange wool of his long outer coat was enough to make it feel like she was a league away from the warm flesh of the man beneath. It was a slightly reassuring feel when Lyarra recalled the strange feelings she'd experienced when warming his hands.

 

"You don't seem to hold it against my brothers and sisters. Why?"

 

"I've told you once that we don't hurt little girls in Dorne." He replied almost lightly. "Nor do the Martells carry grudges on for generations. If we did, we would be ruling the barren wasteland that our ignorant neighbors often assume Dorne is."

 

"Every family here can tell you that the North remembers." Lyarra bit her lip. "Grudges are carried for a long time in Northern hearts."

 

"A warning, my lady?" His black eyes glittered with curious appreciation.

 

"A contrast."

 

Lyarra was about to say that it was a warning. She didn't want any of her family hurt for King Robert's mistakes and Lord Twyin's evil actions. She was upset to know that her father had sworn such an awful oath as he had, to protect rapists and the murderers of children. Despite the disappointment of knowing it, the knowledge still had no effect on the love she bore for her father.

 

Gwyn's voice was hissing at the back of her mind though, begging caution. That was an unusual occurrence, since Gwyn was usually the one instigating some insubordination towards someone. The Westerlands maid chose odd moments to either fall completely silent or overindulge her sharp tongue.

 

"A politic answer, Lady Jynessa will be pleased."

 

Lyarra cast her eyes sideways and felt her lips crook up a little when she saw him smirking at her. Lord Oberyn was much older than her. He looked perhaps a year or two her father's junior with his night black hair threaded by just a few strands of silver. Even the lines on his bronze face seemed carved more by smiles and the sun than age, and there was a boyishness to his sharp features and playful smiles that Lyarra realized she liked.

 

It was a sudden thing, rather an ambush, to discover that she thought him handsome. Northern men were supposed to be tall, and Prince Oberyn was. They were not supposed to be lean, however. An ideal Northerner carried a handsomeness that was rugged and bearded, with long hair and strong, thick muscles. The Viper was as leanly muscled as his namesake. His wiry form was graceful, and his movements languid when he wasn't showing off his frankly astonishing reflexes.

 

In truth, the even fineness of his features was almost pretty, and Lyarra had heard whispers that he'd once favored the company of men as much as women. It was a completely alien sort of handsomeness. Lyarra decided that she was just grateful that her husband made her feel that sudden hint of something that raised the hair on the back of her arms and neck. She'd definitely had worse matches proposed. Lyarra no more anticipated delight in the marriage bed then she felt any maid would, but she at least contented herself that he always smelled faintly of spices and had a clean, healthy body. His manners were good and he didn't disdain the fact that she'd had to be legitimized to gain the Stark name.

 

"I believe it is my turn."

 

"Ask." Lyarra found herself smiling. "You'll likely be bored, my Prince. I've lived an uneventful life."

 

"I've lived anything but, so perhaps you may regale me with stories of the foreign concept of boredom and I might tell you my own tales." His tone was teasing and Lyarra relaxed further. "Content me first with the answer to a mystery. I heard Lord Karstark speculating earlier that your mother was Ashara Dayne, but I know this to be false. Was she Dornish? It seems most likely."

 

"I don't know." Lyarra replied, woodenly, not having expected the question even though she realized she should have.

 

Her good humor fled entirely and it was only when she felt the rasping of his callouses across the top of the hand she had tucked in his elbow that she realized she'd stopped walking.

 

"Your hands are cold again." She muttered, bringing hers up to chafe at his larger hands.

 

His skin was very dark against her own. He also rubbed at her hands almost greedily as they stood in an abandoned corridor that would take them up a set of stairs and thence to the guards standing before the family's quarters.

 

"And again, yours are not." He murmured quietly in return, and his dark eyes were soft as he looked down at her. 

 

"Forgive me for causing you pain. You have lost her then?"

 

_ "I don't know _ ." Lyarra returned uncomfortably, and he frowned.

 

"Dorne's population is more mobile than most of the other kingdoms. We travel, and some of our people are entirely nomadic." Oberyn replied. "If you've lost contact with her it does not mean that the plague took her, or some other fate."

 

"No," Lyarra swallowed and clarified. "I mean I don't know. Father, he - Lord Stark won't speak of it."

  
  


The Prince stared at her as though he didn't understand, his black eyebrows knotting over his eyes and drawing attention to the sharp line of his jaw and strong nose. Somewhere in the back of her mind, behind the old pain and hurt, she noted that she liked his nose. A strong nose was considered a fine thing on a Northern man. Prince Oberyn wore his well.

 

"I'm aware that he keeps the secret from the world." The Viper asked, his expression shifting to something more dangerous. "Are you telling me that  _ he will not tell you _ who your own mother is, my Lady?"

 

Lyarra felt strangely defensive of her father. This had been the largest divide between herself and her only parent since her earliest memories. She'd asked him again after her Mark appeared, wondering if her mother was Dornish and that might have something to do with the Mark appearing. Unfortunately, Lord Stark had been even more severe in his answer than he'd been before. Her father had made it clear that she was not to ask him again, though he'd promised - again - to speak to her of it one day in the future.

 

" _ You've _ raised your own daughters away from their mothers, haven't you, Prince Oberyn? Surely there are some questions of their mothers you don't answer."

 

"The Stranger took Tyene from me." Prince Oberyn's voice rasped with pain and anger. "I took her from her mother at birth and raised her on goat's milk from my own hand on the journey back to Dorne after she was born. I lost her too young, but she was older than you, Lady Lyarra. Never in all of her life did she not know of her mother's name and all I could tell her of the woman, and few would say I did anything but shame myself utterly when I seduced a Septa from her vows to make Tyene. How could I claim any honor at all if I kept from them such knowledge for my own bruised pride? All children have a right to know where they came from."

 

Lyarra opened her mouth, then closed it. She could feel a hot blush suffuse her face as something caught in her chest. No-one, not even Robb, had ever said something like that about her father. On one hand she wanted to dispute it, strongly. Her father was a good man, an honorable man, if often inflexible. On the other hand, something hard and painful was unknotting in her chest at the unexpected, furious, and impassioned defense.

 

He'd said it was her right to know, as it was a man's right to a fair judgement from his Lord or a Lord's right to his lands or wife. Lyarra thought rather distantly that she'd never been told she had a right to anything before. Mostly she heard only of what her trueborn siblings were due, though that had changed somewhat with the Mark.

 

"My Lady."

 

Lyarra jerked her gaze from where it had fixed on the front of his tunic back to his face and realized, to her horror, that her own face was wet. Automatically she reached up to wipe the shameful tears away. She wasn't a child!

The prince beat her to it, freeing his hands from hers he reached up and framed her face with them. Lyarra froze in place, never having been so close to a man who wasn't her kin before. He leaned forward and she found her fear misplaced as his lips pressed gently and chastely against her forehead instead of anything inappropriate. It was an almost paternal gesture, warm and comforting, and Lyarra leaned into it. She had no idea what to do now, so she rested her hands awkwardly on his chest and waited to see what he would do next.

 

"Prince Oberyn!"

 

Lady Stark's outraged voice cut through the halfway and Lyarra jerked away from her future husband. Ghost, who'd been leaning against her shins through the whole exchange turned with her. Then her direwolf pup did something it had never done before to another member of the family. Turning with both the prince and Lyarra, Ghost spread her legs in a solid, threatening stance, curled her white plume of a tail over her back, and pulled her lips back from her sharp white teeth in a silent growl.

 

Lady Stark stared down at the pup in shock even as her thin-lipped glare at the two people in the hallways danced back up to her stepdaughter and her betrothed.

 

" _ Snow _ , go to your room." The words were out of Lady Stark's mouth in a familiar, scandalized and frustrated tone. "Prince Oberyn, my Lord wishes to speak to you."

 

"And I have words for your husband." Oberyn's reply was full of derision. "However, I believe you misspoke to the Lady Stark and owe my betrothed an apology."

 

"Perhaps, however, I was not raised in a house where men weren't allowed to take liberties with their intended."

Lady Stark's righteous indignation rolled off of the Martell prince like water off a duck's back.

 

"Really? That's a new tale." The Viper replied, his words glistening, dangerous coils. "Tell me, Lady Stark, did you by any chance receive a letter from Lord Baelish ere his death of the Plague?"

 

"What?" The Lady started, her face paling. "Petyr's dead? Little Petyr?"

 

"Mayhaps had you not ignored him for decades, you'd be aware of your dear foster-brother's death." Oberyn drawled. "Though I dare say that if you had received one of his letters, as so many other houses did, it would be much on your mind."

Lady Stark's expression hardened.

 

"I'm not going to bandy riddles with you in the hallway."

 

"Thank you, my Lady, for that would be a waste of both of our time." The Viper smiled, his fangs gleaming as Lyarra stood still next to him, watching in shock as the man openly engaged with the woman she'd spent her whole life either avoiding or being so carefully respectful of lest she suffer. "Instead ask Lord Hoster precisely why your little sister bled near to death in her bed before her marriage to Jon Arryn. It will cast an entirely new light on the Tully motto, and just how far  _ family _ extends when face is at stake."

 

With a low bow that was in now way polite Lyarra found a hard kissed pressed against her hand and then a pair of black eyes snapping as they met her own.

 

"I shall see you soon, my Lady, for now I go to find if some other convenient royal has demanded an oath forbidding your father from uttering your mother's name as well."

 

Lady Stark's face was as pale as ice and twice as hard as she watched him go. As she turned to Lyarra something twisted in her belly and climbed upwards. It coiled around her spine and forced her to stand straight as it pushed her shoulders back.

 

She dared for the first time in her life to turn the verbal exclusion Lady Catelyn had used on her since her birth against her father's wife.

 

"If any of my  _ family _ should ask where I am, Lady Stark, I will be carving."

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting married.

**Chapter Six - 297 A.C.**

 

A fortnight made a lot of difference in many things. In four-and-ten days, Lyarra found her dowry settled, the marriage contract completed, and herself standing in her father's solar with a quill in her hand. The Prince hadn't been lying when he said things were different in Dorne. A marriage contract was what bound two souls together, with the ceremony but a technicality in law.

 

The Prince had made her blush when he'd drawled that the state of a woman's hymen was no one's business but her own. Marriage was a set of promises made in trust and honor. If one was untrustworthy and dishonorable, than being a virgin would do nothing to change that. It was a woman's word that made her married.

 

Lyarra felt oddly powerful as she signed her name beside the Prince's great flourish of a signature. Her own was small, neat, and tidy. It was the efficiently penned name of a girl who'd loved to draw and never had quite enough parchment. Below her name her father's signature was bolder and larger. Below the Prince's, Lord Gargalan's name was equally as elegant, but not so outsized. Lyarra supposed you could tell something of a person by how they wrote.

 

"In Dorne, this would have us wed, and the celebration all that remained." Prince Oberyn observed a little wryly. "This is the North, however, and I must claim my wife before a  _ tree  _ to be properly wed. Will you show me the Godswood, my Lady? I've yet to see it in my time here."

 

"Of course, Your Grace." Lyarra replied, for a fortnight hadn't given her enough confidence to abandon the distance that civility gave her.

 

It had served to produce other accomplishments. Lyarra now enjoyed a privilege she hadn't had since she was Arya's age. Every morning at sunrise, she sparred with Robb  _ openly _ . The Prince and a collection of others who chose to rise so early joined them. Much of the Dornish party came to the yard for these semi-official training sessions, and several of the Northern Lords and their heirs had taken to attending and participating as well.

 

The Prince was adamant that she should become as skilled with a blade as she wished. Lyarra had been delighted with tales of the female warriors of Dorne. In turn, Oberyn had been visibly pleased to share his stories of the great female warriors he'd known. Most had been from his homeland, but three had been from Essos. With those stories had come tales of his time founding a mercenary band in the Free Cities.

 

The Red Viper took by far the most pleasure in telling tales of his daughters' prowess. Obara Sand, who fought with a spear like her father and also favored the whip. Nymeria, who could hide a dozen knives upon her person and use and throw them as well as any Braavosi assassin. His daughter Elia, whom he called Lia, was referred to as Lady Lance by the servants, though she was barely older than Sansa was.

 

"She rides like the wind, and can unseat a man thrice her size with no effort." The prince had bragged with obvious pride. "I know, I've been one of them more than once."

 

Talk of his girls' skills had led to talk of the Sand Snakes themselves, and Lyarra was determined to foster that. Oberyn's support, unexpected and unasked for, against Lady Stark had been both exhilarating and a little shameful. It was exciting because no-one had ever stood up for her so before. Lyarra's shame was rooted entirely in the hurt she knew her father always felt over such things, and the awareness that Lady Stark had never been truly cruel to her. Dismissive and unwelcoming, yes, but she could have been so much worse.

 

Lyarra was determined to do better by her own stepdaughters. It would be ridiculous to try and mother any of them; even the youngest were older than Rickon. Obara was nearly old enough to have been Lyarra's mother. What Lyarra knew she could do was be kind to them, and make it clear that she wanted friendship with all of the Sand Snakes. At the very least Lyarra figured that they could all establish a truce.

 

_ Speaking of truces… _

 

Lyarra had very deliberately not shown up for their morning spar. She knew Arya and Robb had gone, not knowing what she did, and Lyarra felt slightly guilty for disrupting the growing accord she knew was being reached between the three over tourney blades and wooden spears. Arya, for one, had undergone a total reversal of feeling where the Viper was concerned. A man who was stealing her sister was one thing. A man who was wedding her sister and offering to take Arya with her to a land where she could train in the yard as much as she desired was another.

 

"You are quiet today, Lady Lyarra." He stated cheerfully. "You are not feeling unwell, are you? I missed you in the yard this morning. Not a single other person attempts to kick me in the knees or pinches during a spar. Though your sister bites."

 

"Not as hard as Rickon." Lyarra replied wryly.

 

She'd finally learned why her betrothed had a bandage on his arm when Oberyn had escorted her back to the family quarters the night he'd wiped her tears away and pressed a kiss to her forehead. The youngest Stark had bitten the prince. Lyarra still wasn't clear on the circumstances, and apparently no one else was either. The nurse who'd been allowing Rickon a run about one of Winterfell's many courtyards loudly proclaimed it happened too fast to understand, let alone prevent.

 

"Who is a viper to tell a wolf not to bite?" The black eyes glittered at her with humor and she tried very hard not to like him more for the glimmer of affection, or perhaps the seeds of what could become it, that she felt over the fate-woven threads that bound their spirits together. "Tell me, my Lady, have I displeased you lately?"

 

It was as good an invitation as she would ever get. Lyarra gathered her courage and every ounce of bluntness in her Northern soul, and just asked.

 

"Lady Gwyn was almost used to you three days ago. Why is she so afraid of you now?"

 

There was a beat of silence and Lyarra reached out, straining to sift through what little she could feel around the older man. Anger, yes, and that fierce hate that was never too far beneath the surface. It's ever ready companion was on hand too, and Lyarra ached for the steady beat of hurt that drummed along with Oberyn's heart.

 

"I came north to fetch a bride and learn some names." He finally replied, bitterly lighthearted. "I've never claimed half a success before at any endeavor in my life. It was always perfect success or bitter defeat. I can't say I have enjoyed this lesson in partial victory."

 

Lyarra had a feeling that, where his victory was concerned, Oberyn had not gained the half he would have valued better. She had no idea how to respond to that, so she fell silent. It was a tense silence as they walked to the Godswood.

 

Once there, she reached out to the peace she always felt in twilight lingering beneath the trees. For perhaps ten thousand years, the Godswood of Winterfell had stood, guarded by the tall sentinels, warmed by the broad branches of the oaks and their blankets of lichen, and watched mournfully by the bleeding red eyes of the silent heart tree. The hush seemed to seep into Lyarra's skin as she led him down familiar paths covered by centuries of lush, decaying leaves.

 

The air was warmer in the Godswood, holding as it did the damp, loamy scent and heat of the hot springs. Perhaps Oberyn felt that peace too. Or he was simply enjoying a chance to breathe warm air while not hemmed in by a dark-beamed ceiling. He'd told her of Sunspear and the Water Gardens and the light, bright, airy architecture of his home. When she wasn't anticipating the desperate loneliness of leaving most of her family behind, Lyarra found herself eager to see it.

 

Lyarra led him to the heart tree, by the largest pool, and waited. She withdrew her hands and tucked them into the pockets of the high-necked, dark gray woolen gown she was wearing that day. Gwyn had slept late, for once, and she'd put on her own choice of gown. After days of listening to Gwyn and either letting the younger girl outright choose her attire, or choosing it with the Dornish ladies she spent so much of her time with, it was a relief to wear something so familiar.

 

"May I touch it?" Oberyn asked after a moment of staring into the face on the heart tree, his black eyes gleaming as if in silent contemplation, or conversation, with the carven features.

 

"Yes."

 

Lyarra found one crawling root that arched up out of the ground. It was as thick as her father's waist and was polished smooth by generations of Starks. She took a seat on it and waited.

 

Oberyn traced his fingers over the nose and around the eyes of the heart tree. He carefully avoided the bloody red sap. He felt the bone white bark. After a while he came over and sat beside her and idly slid his hand around her forearm. Lyarra let him draw her right hand from her pocket and trace his fingers over the callouses on her palms and the tiny, thin, white scars that covered her hands here and there.

 

"How did you get these?"

 

Thinking of how long an explanation that would take, Lyarra reached back into her pockets. It took a bit of searching, for she'd sewn extra pockets in the skirt of her gown, but she found what she was looking for. She wordlessly handed the prince her token.

 

A few days before she'd begun to go stir crazy during her lessons with Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria. Both were intelligent, cultured women and Lyarra loved having a chance to learn from them. She was just used to making things while she learned, and embroidery was not helping.

 

"You carved this?" He sounded intrigued.

 

"Aye."

 

It wasn't her best carving by far, but Lyarra could admit it held some charm. It had originally been a little chunk of knotty pine burl with the golden tone of the wood worked through by twists of black grain. Now, however, it was a chubby little mouse curled into a ball, wrapped in its own tail as it slept.

 

"You're good."

 

"I didn't start out that way." She replied, amused, and stretched out both her hands to show off the scars she'd earned learning how to handle the sharp carving blades.

 

The prince chuckled and nodded, then he continued.

 

"I had no intention of scaring the girl." It wasn't quite an apology, but she could feel the truth of it. "She can't have lived two years at Casterly Rock without having overheard a great deal. Especially given how much she tends to hear in Winterfell."

 

"What do you mean?" Lyarra asked sharply and got a smug smirk in return.

 

" _ I mean _ , my lady, that in the future you should plan your secret meetings without bringing along two of your three loudest siblings or allowing your spymaster to cross the castle grounds lugging half a bakery with her."

 

Lyarra wanted to be offended, but instead she decided she'd have to settle for severe embarrassment.

 

"How many people heard?" Information would be good, too…

 

"None but I." He proclaimed while pressing a flamboyant hand against his chest in mock humility. "I couldn't sleep that night, so I was already out in the sparring yard with a spear and Ser Damien. I sent the latter off when I heard you shushing your siblings. I followed you across the yard and stood guard at the gate. It's a wonder what a well-armed prince can do to the intentions of other eavesdroppers, is it not?"

 

"Rank and the potential of a lethal poisoning are strong motivations." Lyarra shot back sarcastically and got a wider grin for her trouble.

 

She was getting the feeling he liked her best when she was saucy. Lyarra had no idea what to do with that. She'd been told all her life by Lady Stark and Septa Mordane that a lady's authority rested within her husband's power, and that she should be obedient to that power while stern in the use of her own. Gwyn had always said Septa Mordane was full of horse shit. She also said that Lady Stark was running on the principle of, "Do as I say, not as I do". If it was true, then why in the world did Lady Stark put her in charge of the education of the House's daughters?

 

Lyarra pushed away the urge to run with that question. She hadn't had Oberyn to herself, without chaperone, since the Prince had offered her such kind and unexpected comfort in the hallway outside the family's quarters. He hadn't succeeded in his quest to help her learn her mother's identity, but it had been Lyarra herself who'd had to ask him to stop. It was obviously tearing her father apart and Lyarra couldn't stand to hurt him.

 

"Gwyn doesn't talk about her past much." Lyarra finally offered lamely. "And she's a strange mix of stupidly brave and easily scared, but she is the only friend I've ever had who isn't bound to me by blood, Oberyn."

 

"I truly did not mean to scare her so. Is she unwell with it?"

 

His response now was sincere, and genuinely remorseful.

 

"She was shaking so hard that she couldn't sleep last night without dreamwine."

 

Her betrothed winced and Lyarra watched as his grimace carved the lines in his face deeper. He looked as old as her father for once, as anger and regret chased themselves around his features. Finally he settled on a wry, humorless smile.

 

"Then an apology would make it worse, if you are sure she's not shaming?"

 

"Aye." Lyarra glared before agreeing with him. "You are right though. She's like a cat. You've got to let her come to you."

 

Her husband snorted in derision.

 

"House Parren uses a lion on their emblem as well, did you know?"

 

"A black lion." Lyarra agreed, then paused. "Once, when we were almost asleep in bed together, she told me there was a story about why the lion was black. She never told it to me, though."

 

"I have made it my business to know a great deal about the Westerlands." That was ominous. "But that is not a story I have heard. House Parren is rich, but considered ineffectual these days. Its leader is a doddering old man and the grandson who stands to inherit a poseur, who does nothing but play at tourneys. He cannot even do that well."

 

Silence fell again and he returned to his seat beside her and tried to pass the carving back to her. Lyarra folded his hand around it.

 

"Keep it." She smiled weakly. "First of many?"

 

His lips turned up.

 

"I will hold you to that." He pocketed the mouse and Lyarra thanked him for allowing Gwyn to become part of her household.

 

"Even if you did have ulterior motives, you had more to forbid her presence."

 

"You're a sincere little thing, aren't you?" He mused and Lyarra scowled up at him.

 

"I'm not that short."

 

"Of course not." Now he was humoring her. "And our stalker is as silent as fog rolling over the Tor, off the Sea of Dorne."

 

There was a crunch of leaves and a near-silent curse as a slender arm banged against wood. Looking over, she could spot a dark-haired little form stepping out.

 

"At your age, shouldn't your hearing be getting  _ worse _ ?" Arya Stark complained sullenly as she crept out from behind an oak several times as broad as her shoulders.

 

Oberyn barked out a laugh, delighted at the sally. Lyarra felt herself smile despite the somber tone of the conversation and the fact that she was still angry that he'd scared Gwyn the way that he had. Not to mention her dissatisfaction over not knowing precisely what was said between them.

 

The Viper's obvious fondness for Lyarra's favorite sister soothed some of that. She could forgive a lot given the man was handing Arya a life that wouldn't smother her and a chance to learn the things she craved like breathing. Besides, when cornered Gwyn tended to make things worse, and if she did know something of Princess Elia's murderer Lyarra couldn't help feeling that her friend should be speaking of it.

 

"And given your size, you should all but float over the leaves, not crack every twig and crash through the place like a charging elephant." The prince laughed and her sister scoffed.

 

"When did you ever see a charging elephant?"

 

Lyarra allowed herself to be led back to the castle on one of her future husband's arms while Arya was coaxed to take the other. Little could tempt her sister into being ladylike. A story about fighting as a mercenary in Essos, a bloody pirate raid, and a charge through a village on the back of a blood-maddened elephant was sufficient to the task of getting Arya Stark to take a man's arm, however.

 

Both of Lord Stark's dark-haired daughters entered the Great Hall for a light meal. Before their various responsibilities swept them apart, the Viper leaned closer and whispered in Lyarra's ear.

 

"The matter of names is not closed."

 

"I know." Lyarra whispered back, then, hesitantly made her own offer. "I'll talk to Gwyn, just - well, give me time."

 

"I'm not done with your father yet, either." This time the tone was clearly testy and Lyarra felt a hint of trepidation for her father even while his persistence in finding out who her mother was for her warmed her a little.

 

"I know." Lyarra agreed.

 

At that point Arya was swept away to lessons with Maester Luwin and Lady Stark collected Lyanna. Her father's wife was friendlier than her wont, and Lyarra found herself enduring one last fitting of her wedding dress. Then it was the greater horror of a long, stern, and confusing talk with the Lady and the Septa summarizing a great range of topics an honorable wife had to be aware of not to disgrace her husband in the South. It was ended on an even worse note as Lady Stark excused herself and Septa Mordane settled in to inform Lyarra of the primary duty of a wife with a stern expression of distaste and The Seven Pointed Star open on her lap.

 

* * *

 

 

_ "If you could promise a lady safety from the Lannisters, we wouldn't be having this conversation." _

 

Oberyn recognized that what he'd heard as scorn in the child's voice had likely been fear. Intellectually he knew that the fear was well-justified. The truth of those words had burned, however, had been salt in open wounds. Hearing them from the button lips of the blonde girl had been too much for his temper.

 

The fear in her blue eyes had been what realized he'd clenched his fists and begun to raise one of his hands. That had been what had drawn him back in horror. The blue eyes weren't green, her face was not sharp enough, and while the girl had the right cheekbones and dimpled chin, it was not cold Cersei Lannister he faced. The memory of her tormenting her infant dwarf of a brother as a child, or the thought of how she climbed into the crown her bloody-handed father had promised her over Elia's death were not relevant.

 

This was the daughter of a man one step above a hedge knight and a poor relation. The Lannisters had only taken the girl in as a ward out of a sense of appropriateness that seemed to forbid letting themselves be embarrassed by a poor connection adrift in the world, but saw nothing wrong with ordering the rape of princesses and the murder of children.

 

Oberyn had dropped his hand immediately, stepped back, and apologized. For all his comment to Lyarra about not doing so, his contrition had been immediate.  _ 'We do not hurt little girls in Dorne _ _ ' _ ; that was what he'd said to reassure his wife. Yet, faced with an inordinately painful truth, Oberyn had been on the verge of doing just that.

 

_ "If you could promise a lady safety from, the Lannisters we wouldn't be having this conversation." _

 

Oberyn wondered bitterly if the lions had mauled one of their own. He doubted they'd consider a poor relation as such, however. House Reyne had earned its red lion by starting out as a bastard branch of House Lannister. If Lord Tywin would slaughter his distant kin so mercilessly then, why not now?

 

"Nephew, if you don't wipe that look off your face, Lord Stark is going to make us renegotiate the damned contract to contain a codicil that you never actually  _ touch  _ his daughter."

 

Oberyn growled and brought a hand to his face, feeling his clenched jaw and bunched brow. Rising from the tub with a curse, he snatched the towel from Damien's hands and applied it roughly to his hair, then the rest of his skin, as he stood in front of the fire in his quarters. Spying his expression on the mirror above the fireplace, Oberyn winced. His uncle wasn't wrong.

 

"I was lingering underneath the windows to Lord Stark's solar two days ago, flirting with a maid-" Ser Damien Sand began and Oberyn cut him off wryly.

 

"Couldn't get anywhere with the blacksmith?"

 

"Alas,  _ no _ . Have you seen the shoulders on that man?"

 

Oberyn hummed his appreciative agreement, though it was a little bitter. The Mark on his wrist was no longer quite as onerous as it was once. Lyarra Stark was a beautiful, kind girl who was growing more intriguing as he got to know her.

 

She was a bundle of unexpected talents. Oberyn had only just discovered that she was a talented sculptor in wood. Lady Jynessa also reported that she spoke passable High Valyrian thanks to being the only Stark Child interested in language lessons and the Winterfell Maester's desire to have someone to practice the language with. He'd seen for himself her talent with a sword. If he had to be shackled for a lifetime to a girl less than half his age, he was pleased it was an one who he felt he could like as well as enjoy the company of.

 

Despite that, it would never make Oberyn happy to have had the Gods decide who he could and could not bed. He'd never had a single partner before and he knew that he might grow to chafe with it more when he actually wasn't living like a Septon. Not that he had any option but living like a Septon, though that might change with his vows.

 

"You were lingering under the window?" Lord Gargalen prompted as the silver-haired lord poked at the carefully arranged clothing and light, gleaming, armor laid out across the bed and the top of one clothes chest. "Oberyn, you didn't forget the ring, did you?"

 

"I did not." Oberyn sighed. "It is in the small silk purse four inches from your hand, Uncle."

 

"Ah." And his uncle went to rifle for the ring.

 

The Rhoynish exchanged rings when they wed. It was a custom that had been embraced by the Dornish. They said that when Queen Nymeria wed she never removed her rings. When she finally died her fingers sparkled with the many tributes of her adventures in widowhood.

 

"While I was lingering by the window I heard Lady Gwyn trying to convince Lord Stark to convince you to take your bride directly back to Sunspear and ignore the King's letter." Damien went on. "She was very convinced that the Red Keep is too dangerous a place for any sane person to venture."

 

"Indeed…" Now that was curious. "Why?"

 

"Lady Gwyn insisted that Lord Stark knew what the Lannisters were like, and that Queen Cersei was the worst of the lot." The knight went on, his expression serious as well as curious like Oberyn's. "He pressed her for reasons. She gave none."

 

"What did Eddard Stark do then?" Lord Gargalen asked, his dark eyes sharp. Damien just sighed.

 

"He took the girl in his arms as if she was his own daughter, and comforted her. He assured her that he would be right there during the whole trip, and he reminded her that it was Baratheon who was the King in King's Landing, and that he'd never owned a better friend in his life than the Usurper."

 

"Did this comfort her?" Oberyn asked quietly.

 

"I think the hug did, but she looked at Lord Stark like she was adding him to her list of things to fret over."

 

"I was quite set to dislike the child for her origins, but she's making me too curious for unrestrained loathing." Lord Gargalen commented before nodding towards the door. "If you'll excuse my nephew and I?"

 

The knight bowed obediently and withdrew from the room.

 

"You said you were going to talk to the Parren girl last night." Lord Gargalen stated baldly. "You spent half the night pacing and cursing and the rest composing a letter to your brother and sending it off by raven. What did the girl say? I'd thought maybe we'd finally gotten the names we seek, but-."

 

"I pressed too hard and spoiled my advantage entirely." Oberyn admitted with intense self-exasperation. "Then I frightened the girl."

 

"How?"

 

"I raised my hand to her."

 

Lord Gargalen had been leaning against one of the bed's four posts, trying and failing to untie the knots in the small silk bag due to his increasingly arthritic hands. When Oberyn said that he dropped the bag back to the bed and rose to his full height. He was an inch or so shorter than his nephew, but his expression was as thunderous as if he were still the man who'd fearlessly take either of his princely nephews over his knee if he thought they warranted it. He said nothing, and when he did speak his voice was entirely quiet and profoundly level.  _ Yes _ , Oberyn thought,  _ his brother's time as their uncle's squire had taught Doran a lot. _

 

"I didn't touch her, Uncle." Oberyn breathed out his shame and anger both, leaving only ashes to coat his tongue and burnt spirit. "I am not so lost as that."

 

There was a long moment of silence before his uncle spoke again, and his voice was soft enough with compassion that Oberyn winced. The kindness hurt worse than cruelty. If the girl's truth had been a lash, his uncle's understanding was a battle hammer.

 

_ "If you could promise a lady safety from the Lannisters, we wouldn't be having this conversation." _

 

A pair of hands that were still strong despite their slightly twisted joints gripped both his shoulders. Oberyn looked up from where he'd been standing with the towel draped lightly around his hips, staring into the flames of the fireplace. He looked up into his uncle's face. His eyes were as dark and still as a moonless night.

 

"It's likely the girl knows who Elia's killers are." Lord Gargalen spoke with a cold practicality not at all present in his expression. "We know that it's spoken of in Casterly Rock. She was at Casterly Rock for two years, and her father was highly placed in the Lannisport Guard for the duration of her lifetime; short as that has been."

 

"Yes." Oberyn rasped. "I'm certain she knows."

 

"I've observed her closely, when Lady Gwyn wasn't actively hiding in the kitchens or the laundry or elsewhere under the guise of errands." Lord Gargalen's lips turned up. "I'm almost impressed at how well she manages to be busy when we're about, but have time to chat when our servants are around."

 

Oberyn felt his lips turn up as well. The girl had the signs of a subtle gatherer of information in her, but she was young and much untested. Their servants were loyal. Though she'd asked and done nothing that was the least bit suspicious, everything was still reported to the Prince and from there to those he felt needed to know.

 

"We know from what she asks that she's genuinely concerned for and loves your wife."

 

"We do." Oberyn agreed. "And the Lady Lyarra's convinced she'll walk over hot coals for her."

 

"My grandmother was from the Westerlands." Lord Gargalen murmured, surprising Oberyn.

 

It was a fact Oberyn knew well enough, though not one he'd heard spoken of in decades. Lord Gargalen's great-aunt had been the original line to hold the tile as Lady of Salt Shore. Unfortunately, she had been a spendthrift. Foolish in love as she was foolish with money, she'd ended up marrying a minor knight from the Vale who was thirsty for power. When she refused to let him dominate her, he'd left. She'd attempted to get him to come back by poisoning herself, but was entirely too effective.

 

The title passed to Lord Gargalen's grandfather; Oberyn's great-grandfather. His own marriage to the daughter of a wealthy Westerlands lord had allowed him to retrench and reestablish his family as one of the driving forces in Dorne. Subsequent generations had increased the family's power and capped it off with a marriage between the Lord's younger brother and the ruling princess who had birthed Oberyn.

 

"She was a fearsome, loyal, loving woman, your great-grandmother." The silver-haired lord went on, lowering himself to sit on the bare lid of a wooden chest not occupied with wedding finery. "Murder on our enemies, you know?"

 

"I've heard tales." Oberyn smiled a little.

 

His father had been terrified of his grandmother.

 

"I'm sure you did. Your father and I were terrified of the woman. Teeny blonde with big eyes the color of turquoise. They called her the Lioness of the Shore in her heyday." He recalled warmly, terror softened by decades of love and loss. "She told me something once, when I was young."

 

Oberyn waited and was rewarded quickly.

 

"She said that in the Westerlands, one trait often runs true in the older families." Lord Gargalen explained. "That they don't love often or easily, but that when they do, they love with their entire being. Your great-grandmother was that way; she either had no use for you or she'd disembowel someone barehanded just to see you smile."

 

"You believe that the girl's in love with my wife?"

 

That was an intriguing idea for many reasons.

 

" _ In love _ , no,  _ loves _ , yes." Lord Gargalen shot his nephew a look of tolerant amusement. "Or, perhaps it would be in love, had she been raised differently. It matters little given the Marks on your wrists."

 

"True." Oberyn admitted a little regretfully.

 

Both girls were young, one entirely too young, but that didn't mean that in a few years it couldn't have been intriguing… if it weren't for the exclusivity enforced by Marks. Oberyn would likely always chafe at that.

 

"If she's afraid of you, then you will have to earn your wife's loyalty and leverage that."

 

"I'll find leveraging her sense of justice a faster road." Oberyn snorted. "I've achieved liking and some fragile trust in the last fortnight. Lyarra Stark is a sweet girl, but she's not inclined to being swept off her feet by handsome princes."

 

"Taking it personal, are we?"

 

Oberyn didn't dignify that with an answer. Instead he began the arduous process of dressing for his part in the pageant that was his wedding.

 

"It seems ridiculous to spend most of a morning dressing for a ceremony that will not take a quarter hour." He complained.

 

"If your appearance weren't so dear to you, it would not take half the morning." Lord Gargalen laughed. "Your wife is likely to be ready before you at this rate."

 

Muttering about Gargalen being his brother's proxy in irritation, rather than supposed level-headedness, Oberyn then had to put up with further laughter from his uncle as he finished his preparations. The older man redeemed himself slightly by preventing Oberyn from forgetting the ring he'd insisted on making part of the ceremony.

 

* * *

 

 

Lyarra didn't have any choice but to accept Lady Stark's offer of her solar as a space to prepare for her wedding. To her surprise, however, the lady had softened somewhat. Septa Mordane was nowhere in sight.

 

Instead she entered the room to find it populated by mostly friendly faces. Lady Alys Karstark looked hangdog and shot fierce glares at Gwyn whenever Lyarra's friend turned her back on her. Other than that, however, the atmosphere was festive.

 

Lady Lyra Mormont and her mother were both present. The Lady of Bear Island, Maege Mormont, laughingly told everyone in the room that – having never prepared for a wedding of her own – she would live vicariously through the bride. Then, her hard face motherly, she sat Lyarra down and began to tend her curls with a comb and a vial of thin oil scented with roses that Gwyn handed her.

 

Sansa and Gwyn were in charge of the clothing, though who had put them in such a position Lyarra didn't know. She had a feeling that no-one was willing to countermand them when they were operating in tandem. Usually Gwyn and Lyarra's redheaded sister sniped at each other when they were trapped in a room together, but today they were a perfect, ferocious, unit.

 

Lady Stark reminded Lyarra through her handling the situation that, their own poor relationship aside, she could stand to remember all she observed from her husband's wife. Lyarra wondered if some small part of the woman's graciousness was that she was finally getting rid of her husband's bastard. Dismissing the thought as unworthy, Lyarra just tried to enjoy being the center of attention rather than squirm in discomfiture at it.

 

"I've never seen a gown made so."

 

Lady Jynessa was nothing but pleased with the wedding gown, and Lady Myria agreed.

 

"The beading is lovely. Your work, Lady Gwyn?"

 

"Yes, though Lady Sansa did all of the finer needle embroidery." Gwyn replied and Sansa beamed in pride as she was also complimented.

 

Lyarra's gown was made of a rich, heavy ivory silk that was finer than any garment she'd ever owned. Her sister and best friend had begun work on it as soon as her Mark had appeared, and her father had donated material that was meant to be a new surcoat for himself. As a result, of course, the traditional full sleeves and wide skirt of a Northern wedding gown had not been possible.

 

Sansa and Gwyn had gotten around this in a novel, and slightly alarming way. They had discounted sleeves entirely, and shoulders and neck with it. Instead the gown cut straight across her chest and carried on tightly down her body in a tube of ivory silk with only a slight fullness that grew into a train at the back of the skirt. A train that was managed by the addition of a piece of black silk cut into the shape of a pie piece that ran from a point at the small of Lyrra's back to its widest point dragging behind her.

 

Black and white Myrish lace, crocheted rapidly in the heavier Northern fashion, covered Lyarra's arms tightly from low across the back of her hand. There was a slit for her thumb, then the pattern of black and white snowflakes and roses climbed smoothly up to her shoulders. They were joined with a high neck in a yolk of lace that flowed down to be sewn to the straight line it formed across the top of her breasts.

 

Gwyn had adorned the lace with tiny glass beads from her collection. They gleamed like ice or droplets of dew amongst the roses and snowflakes. Then she and Sansa had attacked the black train. With Sansa's delicate needlework twining lifelike white roses amidst the heavier geometric snowflakes Gwyn's hooked needle had left, the dress was taken from odd and simple to quickly exquisite.

 

The gift of a fine, translucent white silk veil from Lady Stark almost finished the gown. Arya had gifted her a pair of pale gray ankle boots lined with white rabbit fur and brushed soft as velvet. From all of her brothers together, a fine belt of silver disks set with moonstones would wrap her hips.

 

That was not the sum and total of her jewelry either. Lyarra hadn't known what to do but thank her betrothed when he'd presented her the circlet. As his wife she had a right to wear it, as he had a right to a thin band of his own. His brother, as ruling prince, had a coronet. Oberyn had told her that he seldom wore it; a man who needed baubles to project his authority had none.

 

It was lovely, however. A small amulet in the shape of a copper sun pierced by a golden spear stood in the center of a group of silver chains. The chains were a network that circled her head and arched over a center part. Lady Maege proved a readier hairdresser than would be expected, though she laughed it off when it was mentioned.

 

"I have five daughters, and I've relatives with Flint curls like this." She tugged gently on Lyarra's hair. "It would be a crime to bind them up in some Southron plaits."

 

"You'll need at least some braids to hold the circlet in place." Lady Stark observed and the other woman huffed, but nodded.

 

"I'll do it!" Sansa stepped forward enthusiastically.

 

To Lyarra's surprise, Arya stepped forward as well as Gwyn. Arya held the circlet of chains in her hands and waited with unusual patience. Gwyn handed Sansa combs without complaint, a silent smile on her face, and piece of heavy white ribbon. Lyarra didn't even bother to ask about the ribbon; there was no way a braid would hold in her curls without proper restraint.

 

"Am I ready, then?"

 

Lyarra had never spent so much time on her appearance before. It wasn't that she was averse to primping. She'd waxed her legs when the hair had darkened and coarsened there like Lady Stark had shown her Southron women did in a rare moment of almost motherly guidance. She'd only stopped when Gwyn had shown her a foul-smelling potion that had been used by the girls in her father's brothels to kill the roots of their body hair. At that point her underarms and legs spent a week red and sore, but afterward she was cured of the curse of having to rip her own hair out.

Lyarra rarely stained her nails colors, however, and didn't experiment with face paints much. Her first attempts had been enough to reduce Robb and Theon to tears. That hadn't been strong encouragement.

 

Now she'd bowed to allow Lady Jynessa to rim her eyes in kohl and darken her eyelids with glittery powders made of some crushed minerals from the desert. Her nails had been filed and buffed by one of the Forrester daughters. Arya, in a display likely never to be spoken of again at risk of violence, had chased everyone else away and lacquered her nails the color of wine.

 

"You need your cloak." Lady Jynessa was smiling at her proudly, and reached up with gentle fingers to settle the Martell pendant against her forehead.

 

The motherly gesture made Lyarra's throat tight as she rose from her seat. Lady Stark, whose expression had been softer than her wont around Lyarra, frowned. It was a stoic expression, and Lyarra suddenly realized that she didn't blame her for it. The gray velvet cloak that Lady Stark was reaching for, with the white ermine capelet over its shoulders and the fine oval of white silk with a gray wolf upon its center upon the back had been Lady Stark's occupation for several moons by the time Lyarra's Mark had shown up. It was, after all, made in preparation for Sansa's moon's blood making an appearance and the wedding that would one day follow.

 

"That's alright, Lady Stark, I have my own." Lyarra spoke up then. "You made that for Sansa, and Sansa's it should remain."

 

"I don't mind sharing!" Sansa protested, though she thought she could hear a little longing underneath her sister's tone.

 

"Lyarra, the colors aren't appropriate." Lady Stark protested instead, looking at the cloak that Arya was lifting from its place folded off to the side.

 

"I haven't had the Stark name long, and won't have it at all by midday." Lyarra replied, trying not to be bitter at how the Gods had given her what she most wanted only so it could be snatched away along with her home. "Those colors will be mine until I die, and I don't feel like giving them up."

 

"Many ladies keep personal arms, or quarter it with their husband's." Gwyn replied, grinning with unexpected delight.

 

The cloak that Arya, with Sansa's help, produced was one that Lyarra had begun working on years before. When draped over her shoulders it was clear that it was slightly too-long. Lyarra had been overly optimistic over her adult height. Lord Stark had given her the length of black lambswool to start her maiden's cloak after he received, and turned down, her first offer of marriage.

 

Robb had saved his allowance along with Theon to give her the white satin that lined the cloak, which was made wide and practical to wrap entirely around her body. Perhaps not the most fashionable way to make a maiden's cloak, Lyarra now realized, but the only kind of cloak she'd ever thought to make when she'd started it. If nothing else, it would keep her warm. It was shaping up to be a very cool summer morning.

 

Across the back was a massive white wolf's head, snarling at the world with a gleaming red eye. The eye was a new contribution, made to an old color scheme, after Ghost had entered Lyarra's life. The embroidery on the Wolf's head was Gwyn's work. It was work of many long hours for the Westerlands girl had used her hooked needle to pile up stitches upon stitches along with mother of pearl beads. The wolf itself was as much sculpture as it was flat embroidery.

 

Sansa had added her own touches to it. All along the edges on each side was a thin line of sinuous knotwork embroidered in white. A gift from her sister featuring the ancient art of the North, most often seen in carvings, Lyarra's favored medium.

 

Arya had joined in the labor of love as well. Lyarra didn't care that the stitches on the hem were uneven and crooked. She loved them more for their origins and the difficulty that Arya found sitting to the task.

 

Draped across the shoulders was a wolf pelt. Killed by Eddard Stark's own hand when its pack was raiding lambs and endangering shepherds amongst the smallfolk, the huge black wolf's fur was silver tipped with age. It had been a fearsome creature in life, though no direwolf, and the fur crowned the cape as indisputably Northern. Lyarra stood still and reached out to rest a hand on Arya's head as Lady Jynessa stepped in for the mother it now looked like Lyarra would never know. She fastened it closed with a cloak pin Lyarra had carved from an ironwood branch dropped in the Godswood.

 

"Do you have Prince Oberyn's ring?" Lady Myria's dark eyes misted as she fumbled for a handkerchief.

 

"Yes." Lyanna spared a thought at how odd it was to see the formidable, political woman sentimental about anything, but nodded towards Arya. "My sister's holding it for me."

 

Arya patted the pocket of the immaculate blue and gray gown she'd willingly put on for her sister's wedding. Her hair was, for once, braided into a crown around her head with ice-blue ribbons, and perfectly tidy still. Their wild little wolf looked every bit the lady, save for the watery scowl on her face and the copper handled dagger hanging from her braided leather belt. Lady Catelyn eyed it with exasperated helplessness every time she saw it, but she could hardly tell her daughter not to wear a gift from the prince's own uncle to Oberyn Martell's wedding.

 

"Then I'll go tell your father."

 

Lyarra nodded solemnly in return to Lady Stark's words and smoothed her hands down the heavy white silk skirt sliding smoothly over her thighs, and she fought to keep the sudden wave of nervousness that had hit her at bay.

 

* * *

 

A wedding ceremony before the Old Gods was not a crowded affair. Most of Winterfell's guests were waiting in the courtyard near the North Gate. There they would greet the newly married couple and escort them with the proper cheer back to the Great Hall for the wedding feast. That would be fairly well attended.

 

Oberyn stood near the immense bole of the the Heart Tree, bracketed by the huge weirwood tree's great spreading roots. Further off to the side, his Uncle stood shoulder to shoulder with Ser Ulwyck Uller. A canopy of red leaves fluttered in the wind overhead, and Oberyn noted that the sun had fled behind a thick veil of gray clouds. He was glad he'd decided to cast pride aside and wear gloves. If he hadn't, he'd probably have ended up fumbling and dropping the ring in the ankle-deep leaves around his feet, or something else equally irritating.

 

Oberyn's lips turned up as he spied two figures approaching in the gloom beneath the trees of the Godswood. One was small and thin, wrapped in a blue and gray dress and taking scowling care not to drag the hem through the leaves and damp brake. The other walked slowly and seriously, his face cast in an expression to match his movements.

 

"Good morning, Lady Arya, I trust the preparations have gone well?" Oberyn's uncle spoke first, his expression nothing but fond as he looked down on the girl.

 

Oberyn still hadn't forgiven him entirely for getting the girl a blade before he could. Yes, it was only a knife, but it wasn't a meager knife. It was a perfectly nice dagger, well-weighted for throwing and as sharp as any razor. The Viper had a sneaking suspicion it had actually been meant as a gift for him, and then shamelessly repurposed by his uncle.

 

"Father and Lyarra will be here shortly." Lord Robb said, ignoring the exchange between the venerable lord and his beaming little sister. "Lord Oberyn, could I have a word?"

  
  


"Of course, several even!" Oberyn replied flippantly, but nodded to his uncle and Ser Ulwyk.

 

Both his witnesses nodded and drifted further away, and Oberyn watched his uncle charm the young wolf girl away with a few well-placed questions about her sparring practice. He knew a story or three about Obara's training would follow. He might also add something of Lia's last victory at the lists. Either way, Arya Stark would not be eavesdropping, though Ulwyk would likely manage to catch at least every other word.

 

"I take it this is the requisite threat?" Oberyn asked sardonically.

 

"I'm sure you once stood before a Prince making such a threat, so I won't repeat history further." Robb Stark's answer straightened the insouciant slouch Oberyn had fallen into and twisted his smile into a frown. "Did father tell you Lord Bolton asked for Lyarra's hand more than a year ago?"

 

"Lord Stark did not see fit to mention it, no."

 

Oberyn frowned at the thought of marrying the quiet, sensitive girl he'd just begun to know to the cold man he'd been introduced to as Lord Bolton. The idea of his revolting banner spread in a pink cloak across the back of any young girl was an unpleasant thought. Oberyn idly entertained the idea of getting to the man's wine, or possibly his leeches.

 

"Father refused." The boy went on in the same quiet, thoughtful, unhappy tone as he stared past Oberyn into the Heart Tree's red, weeping face. "He said he wouldn't marry any of his girls to a man over a decade their elder."

 

"Which is when you looked on to Lord Umber's son, I presume?"

 

"Aye." Robb looked away. "The Smalljon is good, and honest, and kind enough to those he likes. He'd have treated my sister well, though I didn't think him good enough for her. I don't think anyone is, really. No offense, Your Grace."

 

"Or, at least, very  _ little  _ offense?" Oberyn snorted and balanced the mix of curiosity and anger he was feeling, to see which weighed out heavier.

 

The comparison to Rhaegar was more than irritating, but he could overlook it, he decided. Oberyn hadn't considered the issue from Robb's perspective, but he'd once fought off unworthy suitors only to lose his sister to a Prince he didn't see fit to lick her boots. He had found no joy in being right. Ashes and weeping had greeted his victory, instead.

 

"At the least." Robb agreed gamely and then he shook his head. "Whatever my coloring, I'm a Stark, but that doesn't mean I don't listen to my mother. My father was a second son, and he guarded his honor before he had a keep or a wife to protect."

 

"Yet, you were born with a title and lands to think of." Oberyn filled in the obvious.

 

"And a family, some of which was more vulnerable than others." Robb Stark's Tully blue eyes were as cold as the Wall that bound his northern border. There was no hint of trout in their depths; they were the eyes of a predator, poised and ready. "I've always protected  _ all  _ of my family with everything I have, and I always will. I ask only that you remember that when you take my sisters away, and as you become my brother."

 

A threat and a promise, neatly wrapped into one. Oberyn had watched the boy struggle, only partially prepared for his duties as heir, while he sat in on and participated in the negotiations surrounding the joining of two of the most powerful houses in Westeros. He felt something akin to pride under the anger and grief that always lashed him when he thought of Elia. The boy had learned something, it appeared. Oberyn committed every word to memory to write to Doran as soon as he had the time. If he could think of a myriad of uses for such words, Oberyn couldn't wait to see what Doran's labyrinthine mind did with them.

 

"I will keep it ever in mind, Brother."

 

Oberyn repeated, amused to call a lad younger than his own children such.

 

"They're coming!"

 

Arya Stark's poorly thought out yell heralded the squeaking of a gate on the other side of the Godswood. Oberyn nodded at the boy, who walked back to where his sister stood. Ser Ulwyk and Lord Gargalen returned to their own places, with the two young Starks mirroring the Dornish witnesses. Oberyn straightened his shoulders and turned in the direction of the noise as he waited for his bride. He chafed only slightly at the inescapable reality of it, as the skin over his mark sparked and itched with heavy anticipation.

 

* * *

 

Don't trip on your dress.

 

Don't step on father's cloak.

 

Don't step on your own damned cloak.

 

Don't let them see your hands shaking.

 

Lyarra had a list of things running through her mind as she walked through the familiar, reassuring smell of the small forest. She tried not to think of how short a time she'd have to visit it. She realized with alarm that she hadn't asked Oberyn if they had a Godswood in Sunspear, and if not, was there some way she could plant one? Would a weirwood sapling survive in the heat of Dorne?

 

_ Oh! _

 

Thoughts of her dignity fled at the sight before her. It wasn't Robb. He stood like a younger version of her father dressed in his best, only with a blue undertunic instead of gray, and crowned by dark auburn waves. It wasn't even Arya in her unusually tidy gown, or the two Dornishmen in their mix of silk finery and copper scalemail.

 

Instead her eyes were helplessly caught on the Prince standing beneath the Heart Tree. Oberyn Martell could command instant respect in a sweat stained tunic and worn leather breeches. The man usually preferred shades of dusky orange and yellow in long leather coats and cotton layers, but the well-cut clothing was no more or less fine than any of the Dornish lords in his party. Now, however, the man looked every inch the Prince he'd been born to be.

 

Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell stood beneath the Heart Tree, and its crown of whispering scarlet leaves was a very fitting canopy for the Red Viper of Dorne. The crackling lightning lingered under her mark, exacerbating the gooseflesh he'd give her when he wandered up to snatch some brief moment alone with her. Lyarra felt a little dizzy as she took in his appearance.

 

Oberyn wore a high barrel-collared under tunic of gold silk to guard against the chill in his air, and it ran down his arms until it tucked into snug fitting black leather gloves. Over that he wore a long split coat of gleaming copper-mail; scaled like the serpent he was. He wore a surcoat of dark red leather over the shining armor, and the leather was worked into a pattern of intertwined snakes, such as might be found in some venomous pit out of legend. Across the chest of the surcoat was blazoned a great red sun pierced by a golden spear in his family's arms, and over it all he wore a cloak of heavy red velvet embroidered around the edges in cloth of gold thread and clasped with a golden sun brooch at his throat.

 

The cloak only fell to his calves, but it was lined with shot silk that danced like flames between yellow and orange. Lyarra didn't have look at the back to know it was emblazoned again with his family's symbol. All such cloaks were.

He wouldn't be wearing the cloak long, and off to the side she could see that his uncle held what had become his everyday cloak. Given that Oberyn was not overfond of the cold it made sense that he should have the fur-lined cloak with the wind picking up. Lyarra herself was not cold.

 

"Who stands before the Gods?"

 

Lyarra's thoughts were jolted aside suddenly as her father spoke in a deep, slightly raspy, voice. She realized that she'd lost track of where she was. Her and her father were far closer to the Heart Tree than she'd realized.

 

"Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell, of Dorne, stands before the Gods, Old and New, to claim Lady Lyarra Stark as his wife." The Prince's voice was firm, his drawling accent seeming to slither through the air around the jagged edges of her father's voice. "And you?"

 

"Lady Lyarra Stark, and her father, Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North." Lyarra's eyes jerked back to her father as he stood beside her. He'd paused to swallow and Lyarra felt her heart ache inside her chest at the sadness in his eyes turned to look down at her and continued to speak. "Do you take this man as your husband?"

 

Lyarra felt her hand shake, but she knew what to do. Somehow she didn't fall as she removed her hand from the crook of her father's arm and walked forward to stand in front of the tall, slender form of the man standing beneath the canopy of red leaves. Oberyn's eyes were as black as the unlit crypts in the shadows beneath the tree.

 

"I take this man."

 

As Lyarra said the words that bound herself forever to the man before her she felt a deep burning in her wrist that seemed to seep down into her bones and spread through her skeleton. Gloved hands reached out and wrapped around her own, anchoring her in place. She was shocked to feel a fine shaking in them, as well as her own, as she knelt in front of the heart tree with Oberyn and bowed her head to pray. Excitement, ambiguity, fear, and a dozen different emotions seemed to settle like a cloud around them before fading away to just leave a feeling of unfocused awareness that Lyarra didn't know how to deal with.

 

Instead of trying to, Lyarra prayed. She begged the Old Gods to give her strength and dignity to handle a place in life she had never anticipated. She asked them to protect her and Arya in a foreign land. Finally she asked that they bless her marriage so that it may be happy, and she might have children of her own to love. Her father's refusal to speak of her mother, even under the haranguing of a prince who also happened to be a persistently aggravating man, had left her with a deep, melancholy certainty that she would never know. It made her long for children of her own that she might at least know motherhood from the other side.

 

The idea of how one got them was still a little frightening, though.

 

She looked up, then, and found black eyes waiting on her patiently. This was where the ceremony she knew was going to be deviated from slightly, and she waited to see what the Pr- her husband would do. He reached up and pulled the glove off his left hand with his teeth, then tucked it at his belt as Lord Gargalen stepped forward and produced a small silk bag from pocket. From that he produced a small gleaming thing that quickly vanished into Oberyn's hand.

 

"As I wed my soul to yours with my words, let the world see our bodies wed with this token." He repeated solemnly and Lyarra watched as he slid a ring onto her left third finger.

 

She didn't gasp even as she felt her eyes widen. On her finger was a square cut ruby larger than the print of her own thumb, its many facets gleaming as darkly as blood on snow. It was nestled deeply in a strong golden band and was surrounded by geometric patterns picked out in tiny diamonds. Suddenly her own offering seemed paltry and she wished she'd taken up Lady Stark's offer of assistance. There was nothing to do for it, however, as Arya was already at her shoulder, passing her the ring that she had to put on her husband's finger.

 

"As I wed my soul to yours with my words, let the world see our bodies wed with this token." Lyarra repeated and slipped the ring home, gratified that at least it fit well as it slid past his knuckle and settled comfortably against his dark skin.

 

His dark eyes watched her, and she was surprised to realize that the hint of pleasure she was barely cognizant of feeling was coming from his as those sharp black eyes looked down at his own hand. She had to admit that the white of the ring gleamed well against his bronze skin. Then he was standing and helping her do the same, and Lyarra had no more time to think.

 

Without a word Oberyn Martell swept her maiden's cloak away. The black wool was passed to her father, who held it against his chest with an expression that could only be called tragic before he folded it carefully over one of his arms. Lyarra saw and felt his appreciation as he looked down at her wedding gown, and the lace that covered her chest and arms. Then his own gleaming, fiery cloak was settled around her shoulders.

 

Lyarra would later deny that she squeaked or made any noise at all when Oberyn swept her up into her arms. She was just glad that he'd had the presence of mind to slide his arms beneath her hair rather than trapping it. Instead, one moment she was standing, then the next she was wrapping her arms around his neck to steady herself as her hair fell over his back. He waved off the cloak that had been brought for him, then, and Lyarra was left to feature as the centerpiece of the raucous procession that waited to take them to the Great Hall for their wedding feast.

 

For a few bare moments, though, she was nothing more than a new bride in her husband's arms as he carried her underneath the sacred hush of the Godswood, and Lyarra would admit years later that she'd savored that a little. Who wouldn't?

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feast, bedding, and shenanigans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I want to thank Madrigal_in_Training for being my beta reader again. She is awesome and the only reason this thing is getting done in any coherent fashion. I altered it quite a bit after she'd already sent it back, though, because I didn't like the way the sex scene played out. Thusly, if you find any grammar errors or spelling mishaps, those are mine entirely! 
> 
> WARNINGS: This chapter has a sex scene. It is moderately explicit. If you don't care for that, or if you're too young for it, please skip ahead to the notes at the bottom and do not read said sex scene. The notes at the bottom will carry all the pertinent information you have to know from it.

**Chapter Seven - 297 A.C.**

 

The Starks still threw a mean party, Mance Rayder thought to himself as he sat with the other musicians. His brown hair bleached to blonde by a helpful lass beyond the Wall, and a smile on his face he enjoyed Eddard Stark's ale heartily and looked around the Great Hall of Winterfell with watchful, curious eyes. It was as interesting an affair as he'd ever seen.

 

Not that Mance had come south of the Wall to see what kind of party the Quiet Wolf could throw. He'd seen that already. Mance had never seen a Dornishmen though, and all he knew of their country was that it was hot and dry and as far away from the Others as you could get and still stand on Westeros. That was reason enough to be curious, was it not?

 

"... and this _bride_ _price_!"

 

Greatjon Umber's loud, carrying voice was currently Mance's best friend. It pleased him to know how furious the Lord of Last Hearth would be should he ever find that out. The man hated wildlings with the passion only a kneeler lord who'd been victim of their raids could feel. Not that he'd have needed to, if at any time in the last how many thousands of years, his people had been allowed escape from the Others. Still, it remained that they had not, the Umbers hated the Free Folk, and the King Beyond The Wall was enjoying the irony of the Greatjon's unintentional help immensely as the man's bellowing carried clearly over the music.

 

"Aye!" The Wull was equally enthusiastic, and nearly as loud now that he'd gotten some ale into him. "Damned brilliant. Not that I'd want to pay to get a good-daughter, but the Ned's always had a good head on his shoulders. He's Northern, that one, for all that the Wolf's Blood settled a little too much with him."

 

"Have you seen the gods-be-damned crop figures?" Lord Umber lowered his voice, after a fashion, but it really didn't help. "What they're sending for the bride price alone'll get us through a decade of winter."

 

"T'will." Lord Wull agreed with an almost smug nod as he swallowed a mouthful of honey-cured ham cooked in sweet cider. Mance wasn't ashamed to admit that he was eager for the song set to change so he could go down and sample the feast itself. "An' the Young Wolf told me that they've got some trade deals in the works to bring more up. If you've good peat bogs, make yourself known to The Ned for it; I have. The ravens'll be flying themselves dead working it out, like as not, but when winter comes around again I'll have no grandfather's  _ 'out hunting' _ this time."

 

"And not beggar ourselves to the Reach."

 

"Not that, not this time."

 

"Spot you a song or three?" A cheerful young female voice interrupted Mance's thoughts and his eavesdropping, but he threw a ready grin up at the voice.

 

The little kneeler lady was as pretty a Southron thing as he'd ever seen. Not that Mance had seen many Southron ladies. Small and slender, but with curves growing in nicely and set to improve with some age, she was perhaps three-or-four-and-ten. She wore a dress of wine colored lambswool with tight sleeves. Dotted down the back were bright buttons made of little circles of polished yellow-orange stone. Around the waist a sash made of strips of black and yellow twill had been tied and wrapped to run under her bust, cross over her belly, and then rest against her hips before the ends trailed down her front.

 

Mance took a moment to admire the woman she was going to grow into as he looked at the dress' low, round collar. Then he shot the girl's slightly suspicious look a wide grin, finished up the song he'd been playing, and stood from his stool to bow. He might have tried to seduce the lass, but the lovingly polished worn wood of her guitar stopped him. There was a certain necessary respect amongst musicians, and he'd already played with her several times this evening. He wouldn't waste her clear suspicion of strangers and the little hint of happiness that had passed between them over music for a tumble with a green kneeler girl with no experience; he'd get better when he was home with his people.

 

"I'm parched and you're a gift from the gods, m'lady!" He replied gallantly and went to go shove his way into the standing room around the low servants tables shoved into the corners of the room.

 

Mance reluctantly admitted that it was a point in the Starks' favor that those tables had been crammed in at all. The Great Hall was filled with bodies, and yet he hadn't forced his small folk out. As though any person were small in the eyes of the Gods merely by birth.  _ Kneelers _ .

 

Once he'd secured a bread trencher and some of that ham to go with a big flagon of spiced, hot ale, Mance found a piece of wall to hold up. To his regret, the Greatjon had decided that he'd had enough talk for the moment. He was out of his seat and had created a general hazard on the dance floor as he spun one of the two daughters he'd brought along around with frightening enthusiasm.

 

Young Lord Robb, Mance thought with a certain wicked glee, looked relieved at the development. He was the only one, but who could blame him? He'd been the 'little' lady's last partner and was a full handspan shorter than her and likely a stone lighter; all of it pure muscle. It appeared that the Greatjon's children all took after him.

 

So far Mance had learned several valuable things. Foremost among them was that the Lord of Winterfell had taken this Dornish tradition of bride price almost entirely in foodstuffs. Which meant that storerooms of the North would soon be filling, as the Warden of the North was sharing the wealth with his bannermen. More importantly, it meant that shipments from the South would be filling them. While that would mean they'd be moving in ways and on roads harder to hit, it still meant that potential raids would go up, and that was good for Mance's people.

 

Mance directed his eyes up towards the high table while he thought this through. He swapped spots on the wall now and then, to better listen, but mostly he mused on the high table. He'd wanted to see what a Dornishman looked like, and now he could say he had.

 

A thin and pretty people, Mance decided, and would have been less impressed if he hadn't seen the whip-thin, wiry Prince carry his bride the full length of two courtyards to the Great Hall. The girl wasn't tall and was built slender, but it was no mean feat for a man Mance judged to be his own age. At least not if you intended to do it without showing the effort. The Dornish Prince  _ hadn't _ shown the effort.

 

Mance scratched at his blonde beard and watched the man say something to Ned Stark. He regretted he couldn't hear it over the din, because it earned a blistering glare and what appeared to be a blush from the Warden of the North. More importantly, it earned a laugh from the damned Ranger Crow next to the bride.

 

Benjen Stark owned a set of eyes Mance did not want turned his way. He knew the man and respected his skill, but that didn't mean he either liked him or wanted the man to stand on his shoulders while Greatjon Umber took that great bloody sword of his to Mance's neck. Best not to give the Black Wolf anything to caw about.

 

Oh, but the girl he was sitting next to.  _ That _ was something Mance could have cawed about. The creamy skin peeking through the shoulders, arms, and bosom of her gown's lace construction were graceful and clear. Her features were heartbreakingly beautiful, and very Northern besides. Her lips full and sensual and a pink that only seemed bright because her skin was so snowy. Her eyes were as dark a gray and as pure as any forest shadow.

 

It was when he thought of just how tempting it would be to steal her that Mance knew he was about to do something stupid. It was just a question of how stupid. He decided to settle on moderately stupid and went to replace the blonde Southron girl who'd put her guitar away to join the squid lordling on the dance floor.

 

* * *

  
  


Benjen Stark's heart was breaking and he was seriously looking for some opportunity to smack some sense into his brother. How could he not have told Lyarra of her mother when a Mark appeared on her wrist binding her to Dorne of all places? And the  _ Red Viper  _ as her husband?! The man's grudge was notorious, and justified enough that the Old Gods themselves had acknowledged it. Lyanna's daughter needed to be warned.

 

Ben had already had one fight with his brother over it, shortly after he arrived in the wee hours of the morning. His party had been delayed. As a result he hadn't arrived home in time to talk to his niece himself.

 

He'd agreed with Ned that she couldn't be told when she was a child. Secrets were poorly kept by young children. Ned's so-called  _ dearest _ friend would have her murdered as soon as he heard, and might do the same to all of the rest of Benjen's family in a temper. Why Ned thought so highly of the philandering, spendthrift, drunken lout he'd fostered with, Benjen didn't know but Robert didn't forgive easily.

 

If Ned hadn't gone south, then his father wouldn't have tried to bind Lyanna to the oaf. If there hadn't been a betrothal, there wouldn't have been a reason to go to Harrenhal. If they hadn't gone, Lyanna wouldn't have ridden against those damned Frey squires. If she hadn't won, then she wouldn't have caught the prince's eye in the Godswood. If she hadn't caught Rhaegar's eye, there wouldn't have been a secret betrothal, a plan to let the Prince  _ 'abduct' _ Lyanna for a Queen's crown and a place in Rhaegar's coming rebellion, and a decision to hide the plan from his wild and unruly brother, Brandon.

 

A raven lost, a ship that never materialized, a prince who ran further south than he was supposed to, and Benjen's world had ended. His wild brother was dead. His father was dead. His sister, his dearest friend in the world, had died in agony birthing a child she’d never get to raise. All he'd had left was a niece his brother was raising under the stained protection of bastardy and a mountain of a temper that only cooled atop the ice of the Wall.

 

"What was that commotion while I was in the privy?" Benjen demanded as he retook his seat beside his niece and reached out to give Lyarra a one-armed hug. "Where's your Prince?"

 

"My father threw out that wandering minstrel for playing 'Bael the Bard'. Look! My Prince has convinced Arya to dance!" She grinned back at him, the expression wide and merry, far more than his sweet, melancholy Lyarra was wont to give.

 

She looked so much like her mother that Ben's heart ached. He'd had years to deal with it, but now it was like a physical wound. Her hair was curlier, but the shade was precisely the same. If anything, Lyarra was more beautiful, but what did that matter? Benjen knew he'd ask for a long ranging when he got back to his position. The cold and danger beyond the Wall would clear his head and heal his heart somewhat.

 

"Brave minstrel." Ben observed with smirk.

 

Out on the floor, the song concluded. It was some fast-paced thing he wasn't familiar with, and had been instigated by Lyarra's little blonde friend. Benjen liked Lady Gwyn, for all her foibles. Mainly because she'd thrown her arms around his waist and hugged him hard enough to risk his lower ribs about ten minutes after meeting him. Then she'd declared him,  _ 'The only Stark who didn't leave his common sense out to die upon a hill as an infant!' _ His brother had looked so sullenly offended, as though he were still the put-upon middle-brother and not the lord he'd grown into, that Benjen had had a soft spot for Gwyn Parren since.

 

"Yes, though in retrospect I might become offended!" Prince Oberyn Martell came back from the dance floor with a wild, sharp grin upon his face as he picked up and drank deeply from a cup of wine Lyarra passed him. "Thank you, my wife."

 

"Offended for what?"

 

Benjen held in a sigh. His brother would choose to be sharp-eared over the stupidest things. The younger of the Stark brothers turned to look at the expression of mulish dislike on his brother's face. He couldn't blame him, not entirely. Ned was, after all, staring at a man who'd be taking Lyarra's maidenhead shortly, if Benjen judged the tone of the feast right. It didn't make Benjen fond of him, either, but he couldn't see anything to hate about the man.

 

Then again, Ben had to admit that time on the Wall taught you strange lessons in the character of men. For all that the Martell Prince had greeted him with a sarcastic sally about his vow of chastity, Benjen knew men now. Moreover, he knew foul men. He'd fought beside rapists for years and knew how such men acted around women.

 

Prince Oberyn's hand rested on the small of Lyarra's back. Sometimes it drifted to her shoulder. Occasionally he curled his arm behind her over the top of her chair. The touches were possessive, but they weren't hungry. Moreover, Benjen had seen when they occurred. If some young whelp was working himself up to ask Lyarra for a dance, or to make some comment, the Prince's hand would settle on his bride and a smile that could have disemboweled an angry mammoth graced Prince Oberyn's even white teeth.

 

Benjen could almost like the jackass for it.

 

"Why the implicit accusation of theft, Lord Stark?" The Dornishman pressed a dramatic hand against his chest, over his finery. "I've been accused of much, and some of it has even been accurate. Never, however, have I been a thief."

 

"You are taking the fairest maiden in Winterfell, though!" Bran Stark piped up.

 

Rickon had already been sent to bed and Benjen was willing to bet that Bran and Arya were on their way soon too. Lady Catelyn's expression suggested that the boy's comment had just reminded her that it was long past when he should have gone to bed. Benjen decided that, after he ensured the bedding not get out of hand, he'd seek his own rest. If he could find any, that was.

 

"Aye, but she was gifted to me by the Gods themselves." The Prince pointed out, smiling indulgently at the lad.

 

Further down the table Benjen watched his brother take another long swig of ale. It didn't help his sour expression or his mournful eyes. Benjen amended his plans to include tossing his brother in a snowdrift at some point. Halfway through the feast a summer snow had hit, and Benjen felt that it was a gift for the express purpose of reminding his brother that his dignity could become a burden. It would take care, though. Benjen had grown taller than his brother, but Ned remained stronger. Perhaps he could get him off guard by teasing him about growing fat. That was becoming a sore spot for Ned…

 

"Not a gift;  _ restitution _ ." Bran managed to get the large word out around a mouthful of dark honey cake, then swallowed and went on earnestly. "The Old Gods Mark their children to make things right between Houses who have wronged each other, or just been wronged. You can't afford blood feuds when Winter is at your door!"

 

Ned and several others, Lyarra included, went stiff around the table. One or two of the Dornish party looked offended. Benjen mentally cursed. The boy meant well, but was too smart for his own good. His little moment of passing on what he knew had also had Bran imply that, in some way, Elia Martell's death could be made up through Lyarra's marriage. A truth, Ben knew, that wasn't going to happen with Ned holding true to that blasted oath to the Baratheon King.

 

Benjen wished he knew who'd slaughtered that poor woman and her babes. If he did, he could just tell the man outright and settle a lot of things. Hell, given Ned's drunken confession about how the Princess Elia had suffered and his brother's grief over their broken little bodies, wrapped in bloody red cloaks? Benjen might see if he could make a trip south to  _ ‘recruit’ _ . An offer like that could go a long way to making Lyarra's reception in Dorne kinder.

 

"Ah," Ben was relieved to see that, despite the tightening of the Red Viper's lips, he spoke with no anger as he addressed little Bran and his bright blue eyes. "You Northerners have interesting ideas, and your Gods with you. In Dorne, we hold that the Marks are given to bring great children into the world."

 

"Of course Lyarra's children will be great. They'll be  _ hers _ !" Arya scoffed, adding as an afterthought. "Your daughters sound okay, too."

 

General hilarity, which the infamous prince joined in, greeted that statement. Ben settled down and watched Ned relax slightly as well. Given that Lyarra was laughing so hard she had to accept a handkerchief from Ned to wipe her eyes, and Oberyn Martell was floridly thanking Arya with sarcasm so intense it was almost visible, Benjen felt that the worst was over for a while.

 

" _ Enough _ !" A retainer Benjen didn't recognize roared, coming to his feet along with several other younger Lords, their Heirs, and a number of others not so young. "Send the children to the nursery, Lord Stark, it's time we had the bedding!"

 

_ 'Perfect timing', _ Benjen Stark thought acidly.

 

* * *

  
  


Robb Stark rose to his feet, his stomach a tight knot of anger. He was distantly aware of his mother catching Bran and Arya by the arms and herding Sansa out with a firm command. Their disappearance wasn't high on his list of priorities.

 

How had he forgotten the bedding? Robb hadn't really given the tradition any thought before. Save, he could admit, a bit of enthusiasm for the idea itself. Getting to see a lady in the altogether and carrying her to her husband to bed was more than a little titillating.

 

The idea of the same happening to Lyarra was not. His sister was shy and sweet and her happiness turned to sadness easily and with little provocation. He'd spent his lifetime wringing laughter out of her and teasing her into some mischief that she wouldn't have otherwise indulged.  _ No-one, _ Robb decided, with a hotness boiling in his gut that was totally unfamiliar to him, was going to tear his sister's wedding gown from her body and carry her through the castle with grasping hands.

 

Before Robb could voice his own furious refusal, however, the hall went silent. Mostly silent, at least. A handful of pained and surprised cries went up first. Then the only sound was the humming vibration of the wickedly curved dagger buried an inch into one of the lower tables by its flight from Oberyn Martell's hand.

 

"There will be no bedding!"

 

The Red Viper's hiss snapped like the strike of the snake he was. Lord Wull's eldest son, who'd lurched forward as if to move past the table and grab at Lyarra, was gripping a torn sleeve and red crease along the flesh of his upper right arm. Several others who'd stepped forward had somehow been struck by the passing knife and were nursing minor wounds.

 

"See here-!" Lord Glover rose to his full height, his eyes sharp.

 

"Indeed." Lady Jynessa's voice interrupted, full of scorn. "We do not practice such in Dorne."

 

"This is not Dorne!" An angry cry went up.

 

"I've noticed."

 

The Red Viper spoke again, and Robb went still and watched him. The sarcastic, but cultured man who'd tormented them through days of negotiations was absent. So was the indulgent father who'd appeared to insist Arya had a right to foster her skills with a blade, and negotiated for her to join his new wife's household with paternal concern for his sister's future happiness. His laugh lines had shifted, carving fissures into his handsome brown features that spoke of boiling fury and a flash-fire temper. This was a man Robb had only caught glimpses of before, though his reputation preceded him.

 

"Is that an  _ insult _ ?" Now the Greajon was glaring as well.

 

"If it pleases you, my Lord, who am I to deny you?" Half-flirtation, half-treat, the poisonous creature standing behind the High Table over where Lyarra sat frozen offered before going on. "I find the night grown cold, and would hate to greet my new wife with my blood grown sluggish. Mayhaps a few rounds of live steel would set us all to rights? After all, if it's excitement that you want, I can promise you a  _ lifetime's _ worth in just a few moments. Let me only call for my spear and sword."

 

"Don't strain yourself, Your Grace." Robb butted in, half his mind dedicated to not letting this become a fight between the coiled and furious Dornishmen who were now standing around the room and the angry Northerners holding their fists clenched in offense. The other half of his mind was just hungry for the blood of anyone fool enough to think of putting hands on his sister. "There are rabble present not fit for a blade as accomplished as your own. Allow me the pleasure of occupying their time."

 

"Whatever's left can be my entertainment for the evening as well." The Greyjoy boy offered idly, but his storm-blue eyes were avid and his teeth bared in a smile that was all fight.

 

"Enough!"

 

A crash and a strangled cry of surprised terror wrenched everyone's attention from the drama at the high table. Down below Robb was shocked to see the Smalljon on his feet. One of a ferret-faced man from Lord Bolton's guard was currently dangling by the throat from one of the Greatjon's son's meaty hands. His face was purpling and his feet pinwheeling over the ground, but the Smalljon no longer looked like he even realized he'd taken the man by the throat at all.

 

"Enough, I say!"

 

Smalljon Umber had been drinking like a fish breathed since the procession from the Godswood. Robb felt for the lad, who was only a couple of years older than himself. He'd never met Lyarra, but they'd all been negotiating for him to wed Robb's dearest sister. When he'd arrived and seen her beauty for himself, then how passionately she fought in the training yard, the other young lord had become inconsolable. He'd spent the wedding feast getting drunk and occasionally crying into his beer while his father patted his back and commiserated with his Heir in between his usual boats of boasting.

 

Now, however, Smalljon Umber's usually pleasant faced was wreathed in his father's most intimidating scowl. His teeth were bared, slightly yellowed by the ale. His bloodshot eyes were wild and murderous.

 

“Lord Stark, we’re not savages here! No matter  _ what _ the Southrons think.” The Smalljon slurred. “The North has honor. I say we ask the lady what  _ she _ wants!”

 

"Fairly spoken."

 

Robb watched his father nod and slowly stand, noting all at once that he'd just sat through the display. Seeing how calm his father's gray eyes were, and the complete lack of anger, Robb started. His father didn't look the least bit surprised. Robb sent a suspicious look to where Lord Gargalen sat, calmly drinking his wine, and wondered if they all hadn't been underestimating his father again. There was no way Ned Stark would have permitted a bedding, either. Robb recalled all of the sudden the stories his mother had told him of his father refusing to permit a bedding at his own wedding to Robb's mother, either.

 

"Princess Lyarra." Ned Stark's voice was level, kind, and spoken in a tone no-one argued with. "Do you wish a bedding to go forward?"

 

"No, Father." Lyarra breathed, her tone a little shaken.

 

"There you have it." Smalljon stated firmly, looking in surprise at the twitching figure he was holding aloft and dropping him. Then the young lord sank back to his bench and bypassed his flagon of ale for the nearest pitcher.

 

Robb met his father's eyes and stood up, moving to stand behind him as Ned Stark moved to his daughter's side, opposite where Prince Oberyn sat. Uncle Benjen and a few of their other lords, including the Greatjon (who gave his son a final squeeze on the shoulders), Lord Manderly, and Lord Bolton moved forward to join the honor guard. Members of the Dornish party rose as well, flanking the newly wedded couple on the opposite side as they escorted Lyarra and her husband out of the Great Hall and towards the Guest House where the bridal quarters had been prepared.

 

Robb didn't get a chance to embrace his sister, though he dearly wanted to when he saw the restrained fear in her gray eyes. His father didn't get the chance, either. Instead they reached the door and Prince Oberyn swept Lyarra into his arms again. Ser Damien Sand opened the door at that point, the Viper stepped inside carrying Robb's sister, and then the door was shut.

 

Robb had never been quite so grateful for anything as he was when Lord Glover's son decided to start a brawl in the yard when the feast was breaking up for the night. By the time he was done he knew his mother was going to be furious to find his best tunic and surcoat torn and bloodstained. None of that mattered, though, because as he sat beside Theon on a bench while Maester Luwin tended their split knuckles Robb had managed to spend two hours not thinking about what was being done to Lyarra behind that closed door.

 

* * *

 

“That was a good throw.” Lyarra found herself speaking out of sheer nervousness as the door shut behind them and after the last sounds of their honor guard departing had faded. “It wasn’t poisoned, was it?”

 

“I do not poison my daily knives.”

 

“Our wedding is not a special occasion?” Lyarra asked, and wished that her mouth wasn’t running away with her due to nerves.

 

“Not one that warrants poison, I hope?” He quipped back.

 

The room was dimly lit. Only a single candle burned in a ceramic cylinder tall enough to guard against possible fire, but with walls so thin that the light shone through it with a milky glow. The fire in the fireplace was high and well-built to last the night without tending. Around them the room was warm and smelled of flowers from the glass houses. Earlier in the day Lyara knew that Sansa had gathered them, now she got to see the results.

 

Prince Oberyn had told her the day before of being kicked out of the best rooms in the guest house so that they might be transformed for the bridal night. He was not offended, but rather amused by the custom. Lyarra was, in truth, a little upset to see the chains of roses and other flowers running up the four posts of the intricately carved cedar bedstead. It was a wasteful, if touching, display of sisterly affection.

 

“That’s good.” Lyarra bit her lip and looked towards the large linen-lined tub that sat steaming in front of the hearth. “Why a bath, my Prince?”

 

“Because we’re both sweaty from dancing and smell of the feast.” 

 

His reply was simple, but Lyarra shivered as she felt the calluses of his hands through the gaps in the lace that covered her shoulders as he settled his hands there. 

 

“Besides, a bath before bed is pleasant, is it not?” He offered quietly. “I slept little last night, and I find myself tired.”

 

“You don’t want to…?” Lyarra’s tongue froze trying to find a word that didn’t belong in Theon’s vocabulary or sound clinical and foolish. “I mean, your rights - it’s the wedding night.”

 

“I am a Prince of Dorne and my word, name, and seal on that contract we copied thrice makes us wed.” He replied simply, his voice calm. “As I told you before; your maidenhead has  _ nothing _ to do with it.”

 

Lyarra watched as he released her shoulders and stepped back, reaching into his surcoat and plucking a small glass phial from a hidden pocket. She stared dumbly at it, wondering if it was some potion. Amidst their lessons in sigils, Houses, bannermen, feuds, and facts about the new land he was taking her to Lady Myria liked to gossip about Oberyn’s reputation. She’d said that there were tales that he’d studied magic amidst his expertise in poisons and handful of maester’s links. The phial, she realized in surprise, was nothing more or less than blood.

 

“We do not hurt little girls in Dorne.” He reminded her, and the gentle tone of his voice was entirely different from the raw murder hinted at in his tones when he’d forbidden her father’s own bannermen from holding a bedding ceremony.

 

“I’m a woman wed.” Lyarra found herself arguing, not sure whether she felt relieved or slighted in her confusion over his generosity.

 

“Yes, wed to  _ me _ .” He insisted, his expression a mix of arrogance and tenderness. “I’ve never taken anyone, man, woman, or whore unwilling to my bed. I shall not start now. We’ve a lifetime ahead of ourselves to give House Martell amazing children. Considering the number of fabulous daughters I’ve already contributed, I think you can rest safely until you’re properly eager for my touch, wife.”

 

“Oh.” Was all Lyarra could manage, still trying to wrap her mind around the idea. Fortunately she’d found that for all her silence and awkwardness with words, her husband was very fond of them. He went on willingly, expounding on the topic.

 

“It’s your choice, Lyarra.” He spoke her name without titles for the first time gently. “I have no  _ right _ to take that from you, husband or not.”

 

“Septa Mordane did not prepare me for this.” Lyarra complained bitterly.

 

“No!” Oberyn snorted loudly. “I do not imagine many septas qualified for the task of preparing a maid for her wedding night, though for some reason they claim the duty.”

 

“Your experience with Septas eclipses mine, so I’ll take your word for it.”

 

Lyarra had meant the comment seriously, but her husband took it as a sally and laughed openly at it, grinning at her unintended humor. That struck  _ her _ as funny and Lyarra found herself giggling. Emboldened, she stepped forward and rested a hand on his chest, breathing slowly and thinking. As she thought on the subject the creeping excitement, foreign and a little scary, she had begun to feel around the man lifted the small hairs on her arms and the back of her neck again.

 

“If it is my choice,” She decided. “I would be your wife in full.”

 

“Your reasons?” He asked, and she realized he didn’t trust her not to do something she would regret.

 

“I spent my whole life bitterly yearning to be a Stark of Winterfell. I was only granted that so I could give my name and home up and become a Martell, and your wife.” Lyarra told him, feeling the pain of it and trying to let it go and be hopeful as she spoke. “I don’t know why the Gods wanted it so. I can’t say if it was the Old Gods trying to acknowledge that we did you a terrible injustice, or if you’ll give me children that history will remember. I do know that I was tired of being the Bastard of Winterfell, and of fearing everyday that something would happen to my father before my brother’s majority.” 

 

He watched her as she spoke and Lyarra felt her tongue loosen further. It was likely the wine, because eloquence wasn’t one of her gifts outside of song. The words of bards flowed more easily off her tongue than her own.

 

“If it did Lady Stark wouldn’t keep me, and I would have to either wed any who would take me to find a home or allow her to ship me off to the silent sisters and misery. Instead I am a princess, and you’ve given me a choice and respect none of the Northern husbands I had hoped for would dream of showing me. You’re not the husband I would have chosen, but I if I am to be your wife, Prince Oberyn, then a wife I wish to be in full.”

 

Lyarra wasn’t quite sure how they transitioned from standing a foot apart and speaking to his lips pressing against hers. It wasn’t an unpleasant change, however, and she had no complaints for her first real kiss. His hands were warm, for once, as they rested upon the small of her back. His lips were dry and soft underneath hers. They moved slowly, tugging and teasing at her own lips until he drew the tip of his tongue across the seam of her mouth. She gasped and he invaded.

 

Emboldened by the knowledge that she had chosen to lose her maidenhead rather than offered it up in a sacrifice ordained by others Lyarra slipped her tongue into his mouth. It was a little awkward. Lyarra found she wasn’t sure where her nose went and she clicked her teeth against his once. He reached up at that and took her chin in his hand and showed her how to tilt her head to avoid such problems. When she came back from the kiss, breathing heavily, it was to realize that she’d risen up on her toes. At some point she’d buried her hands in his short, black, hair and mussed it severely.

 

“Our bath is getting cold, my brave little wolf, and I have two requirements of my own before I take you to my bed.”

 

“What?” Lyarra asked, surprised and curious.

 

“First, I will not bed my wife if she can’t call me by my given name.” He smirked at her, his eyes black in the dim lighting of the room and playful. “Secondly, I do not make love to the ignorant. Share the bath with me and a most enjoyable lesson.”

 

“Aye.” Lyarra breathed and then turned her back to him and pulled her hair over her shoulders as she very deliberately used his name alone and not his title. “I cannot get out of this alone, Oberyn. Could you unlace me?”

 

Her husband laughed softly behind her.

 

“Yes, and you shall have to help me out of my armor. As pretty a picture as this night would be with Damien added to it, I do not think him welcome right now.” 

 

Lyarra huffed at the sally, accepting it as the first of many. 

 

* * *

  
  


Oberyn had chuckled less at the ridiculousness of the situation, then the charming innocence of the girl he’d wed. One moment she was a blushing bride, frightened of her new husband’s fearsome and debauched reputation. The next she’d been as bold as ever she was with a blade in her hand, telling him she wanted to be a full wife to him and all but demanding his services. 

 

He felt a welling of grief at the painful reality of how much Ellaria would have liked his new wife. In another lifetime, were the Gods kinder and less miserly, perhaps there would have been three Marks. His beloved would have shared his ardor entirely, and likely been a better teacher for a maid than he could hope to be. He’d only ever bedded one untouched woman before, and then he’d left her to her faith after she’d given him a daughter.

 

Lyarra’s unintentional, practical, seduction brushed some of his hurt aside, however. Oberyn was grateful for her innocent demand he help her disrobe. There was a charm there he fully enjoyed as he slid the dress carefully from her body and allowed her to drape it with care over a chair. Her smallclothes were surprisingly enticing. She wore a white satin corset embroidered in delicate blue patterns and a pair of smallclothes that were no more than a scrap of cotton and lace. 

 

Beneath his armor Oberyn was relieved and excited to feel his shackled member do more than merely stir. With thoughts of Lyarra in his mind Oberyn had managed some limited relief with his own hand. For the better part of half-a-year, however, he’d lived the life of a Septon and chafed at it. As Lyarra helped him off with his finery and his armor (and a few concealed knives) he reveled in the sensuality of what he knew was coming. Partners aside, he’d missed the act itself.

 

He allowed her to turn away and slip into the tub as he got rid of his trousers and smallclothes. If she was feeling shy he had no right to rush her. He did take the time to truly appreciate her own naked body, however. The unbroken line of ivory skin was the same shade of pale everywhere. He was enchanted by the small triangle of dark curls at the apex of her long thighs and the pale shade of pink her nipples pebbled into.

 

* * *

 

  
Lyarra couldn’t quite bring herself to look at her husband as he finished stripping. Instead she settled into the bath, sinking down until the night-darkened water covered her up to her collarbone. It felt good to sink into the hot water, and Lyarra suddenly realized that she was tired despite having done no more than dress, pray, feast, and dance all day. Revelry was exhausting; she’d have preferred a day in the library tower.

 

It was a strange and frightening thought that she had a husband, but it was exciting too. No one could call her a  _ girl _ or a  _ maid _ come morning. She would be a wife and  _ princess _ . 

 

A wife whose husband slipped so neatly into the water that its surface barely stirred. He really was a lean blade of a man, she noted as she turned slightly at the feel of his leg pressing against hers from ankle to hip, brokenly only where he had to bend his knee to accommodate his height. Oberyn curled an arm around the lip of the tub and sighed, cracking his neck and shoulders loudly and earning a stifled giggle from the absurdity of it.

 

She was going to have to tell Sansa. Handsome princes were  _ nothing _ like the songs. 

 

“Your sister is a demon on the dance floor. On the plus side, should I ever find myself in the melee without a weapon, I can call for a minstrel and your sister and have a passable flail at hand. I’ll just have to fit her with iron boots, first.”

 

Lyarra gave up and rested her face against his shoulder, shaking with silent laughter. She finally choked out a confession as she felt his hand wandering warmly between her back and the linen lining the sides of the tub.

 

“This isn’t going as I expected it to.”

 

“How did you expect it to go?”

 

Lyarra breathed in the soft scent of his neck. It was a mix of sweat and the smell of the roast aurochs that had been central to the feast. Underneath was still a hint of the spicy scent she’d always noticed hanging around the man. She decided that, at some point, she’d ask if it was perfume or simply Oberyn that smelled so.

 

“This is better.” Lyarra offered by way of an answer and reached out to tentatively pet the smooth skin of his chest. “You’ve no hair here.”

 

“I remove it.” He replied, and kissed behind her ear, making her shiver.

 

Lyarra had piled her hair atop her head, twisting it around itself into a messy knot. If she got it wet it would take most of the night to dry. It would aso end up soaked, cold, and unpleasant in every way. Nobody needed a wet hair cloak that weighed as much as Rickon.

 

“Tell me, my darling,” Oberyn asked her quietly as she settled more closely against his side, and interrupting her intention to ask why he didn’t take the hair off his legs if he removed it from his chest. “When was the last time you saw a man naked?”

 

“When I was eight and Robb was nine and Lady Stark decided we were too old to be bathed together.” 

 

Lyarra’s honest answer sent her new husband into paroxysms of repressed, silent laughter that had the water rippling in the tub around then. Lyarra had to stifle her own giggles in response. She ended up with her face hidden in his shoulder while he pressed his cheek against her curls as they both calmed.

 

“At least I may rest assured you shall find me impressive by comparison.” He finally japed. “Do no men piss in the corners of Winterfell’s courtyard?”

 

“Not unless they’re dead drunk and want to risk Lady Stark’s temper.” Lyarra snorted. “The first usually being the only condition where they dare the latter. Even if they  _ do _ , I don’t  _ look _ .”

 

“Then let the lesson begin.” He breathed, stirring a loose curl hanging around her ear and prompting Lyarra to look into his face and find his black eyes pools to drown in. “This is how a man is made, Lyarra.”

 

Her husband lifted one of her hands and kissed her knuckles before leading it beneath the water and down his chest. She felt her face flush as she felt the dip of his belly between his hip bones, and the divot where his belly button was. He’d left some hair there; a short trail of softness leading to a tangle of harsher curls below. 

 

When something smooth and unexpected brushed against Lyarra’s wrist she froze her hand’s progress. She could feel the rough curls beneath her fingertips, but wasn’t sure what to do. Septa Mordane had told her that she was to lie still and let him do what he wanted to her. Then she’d read to her about the sins of fornication corrupting the soul.

 

Oberyn wanted Lyarra to sit with him in the bath. He wanted to trade lazy kisses, as he was doing now. He wanted her to touch his body, and he ran his hands over her back, kneading while she froze, unsure of how to touch  _ him _ . She concentrated on kissing instead and resting her hand low on his belly as a safe stopping point until she found her courage again. The kissing was lovely, and she was beginning to feel that creeping excitement beneath her skin again. Perhaps even more encouraging; she was getting some disjointed sense that he was excited and pleased as well.

 

“Are you going to touch me, too?” Lyarra asked, unsure of where his “lesson” was going, but having grasped that he wanted her comfortable with both of their bodies. 

 

It was a strange thought, but she would take the pause it gave her while she tried to hide her ignorance of what they would actually be doing during the coupling itself. Septa Mordane had been no help. The most specific she’d gotten was that he would penetrate her while she lay beneath him; a single meager sentence of information. 

 

Theon had likely accidentally told her more with his comments about wet, eager, whores and the size of his member. Not that Lyarra was supposed to listen in on those conversations between her brother and his older friend. Robb had always been wroth with Theon when he figured out he’d said something like that where any of Robb’s sisters could hear.

“Where would you like to be touched?” The soft purr of Oberyn’s voice against her lips made her shiver more than the gentle hand on the small of her back.

 

Lyarra had intended to tell him that she didn’t know where she would like to be touched.

 

“Everywhere.” Is what came out of her mouth instead.

 

“As my Princess commands.” He grinned against her lips.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn was delighted. He’d expected to have Lyarra take the offer of time he’d given her. The girl was shy, and not inclined to let people close. He’d noticed that her family was affectionate; they embraced each other freely and pressed kisses to each others’ cheeks in greeting. Lyarra only reluctantly exchanged embraces when greeting the other young Ladies of the North who had joined the festivities at Winterfell, and she’d been as nervous as any wild thing who’d lived untrammeled when he’d pressed a kiss to her hand or slipped an arm about her shoulders during the last fortnight.

 

Now, Oberyn found he had in his arms a very passionate little wife. Inexperienced, yes, dreadfully so, but passionate and so very responsive. He earned a series of gasps pressed against his lips when he traced his fingers down the side of one pert little breast for the first time. He garnered a hand through his hair and a blissful expression when he petted the silk-soft inside of a thigh. When he finally leaned her back in the tub and took a pale little nipple in his mouth she mewled and arched her hips against nothing, seeking out something she didn’t understand she wanted.

 

Oberyn was dearly tempted to relieve his own growing need by carrying her, wet and dripping, directly to the marriage bed. Unfortunately he was a man of his word. He did  _ not _ ravish innocent young girls. He needed her to know his body even as he was teaching her to know her own.

 

He just hoped that half a year’s unwilling celibacy didn’t have him embarrassing himself in the bath. Oberyn was, for once, rather grateful that he was only days away from his fortieth nameday. Had he been five-and-twenty he would never have been able to summon the patience.

“I think you know a bit more about being a woman, darling, but you’ve yet to learn much about men.”

 

“I’ve learned your hands are more dangerous than your tongue, despite its reputation.” Lyarra panted back, flushed down to where the water met her chest, and Oberyn grinned wickedly.

 

“Ah, but you only say that because I’ve no way to properly acquaint you with my tongue’s virtues without drowning.”

 

The thin rim of gray around her blown pupils widened and Oberyn chuckled, indulging himself with a long kiss and enjoying the way her hands now wandered freely over his shoulders and chest. His wife dared to draw her fingertips over one his nipples, then gently twisted it. He purred his pleasure and nipped her lower lip.

 

He was rewarded further when she abandoned his chest and finally made good on his earlier offer to explore lower. She curled her hand around the base of him and Oberyn winced when she was a little too rough given the state he was in. She immediately took her hand back and he swallowed her apology with a kiss.

 

“As long as it’s been for me, I suppose we shall both have to be gentle with each other.” He teased, wanting to combine setting her at ease with a sop to his own pride. Usually he didn’t mind it a little rough. “Here.”

 

He took her hand in his and showed her how to touch him. Oberyn ended up moaning into the hair atop her head, tugging her against his chest so that he could have something to hold onto and ground himself with. If he wasn’t careful he  _ was _ going to embarrass himself. It had been that long, and the growing novelty of feeling flashes of her excitement and pleasure along with his own was a distraction that jarred his already fragile control.

 

“It’s bigger than I had thought it would be.” His young wife blurted out as Oberyn moved her hands aside and he gave in and laughed again.

 

“Is that a compliment on an insult, wife?” Oberyn demanded, but grinned to soften his offended tone and was rewarded with a guilty smile.

 

“A sign of my own ignorance?”

 

“Your prince will accept this answer.” He allowed and retaliated by moving his teeth down to the spot on her neck that he’d found left her limp and squirming in his arms. “You must tell me if you wish to stop, and it is too much.”

 

“Hm?” She asked, lazily, and Oberyn slipped his hand down into her own sodden lower curls, marveling at how soft they were as he searched for the pleasure he was intent on giving her before they left the cooling tub.

 

“Let’s dry off.”

 

* * *

 

Her husband’s order was given with a tense voice, thick with restraint. Lyarra could barely pick out the words in shock as she lay panting in his arms. She was sure she’d left bloody scratches in his back. Robb had complained before that her nails were as thick as any real wolf’s claws, and while she kept them fairly short and neatly filed she knew she could draw blood from a few accidents in the sparring yard.

 

Oh, but she hadn’t been able to help it! She’d had no idea that it could feel like  _ that _ to be touched there. Occasionally she woke up from a dream and her womb felt heavy and she was sensitive below. Lyarra had shared a bed her whole life, however. First a crib with Robb, then as a child with Sansa, and lastly she’d shared her maiden bed with Gwyn. She’d never been alone enough to try anything to alleviate the occasional discomfort of waking unfulfilled from… something. 

 

Oberyn had changed that entirely. His hand had plundered her, and she’d enjoyed the shameless maneuverings of his fingers utterly. He’d played with the most tender parts of her, spreading and soothing the petals of what Lady Stark had once awkwardly referred to as a woman’s “flower” when explaining to Lyarra what moon’s blood was and how a babe was birthed. 

 

Her princely husband had sought out and found the very center of her pleasure, and then worked the pearl of flesh until she was a shuddering mass in his arms. Worse, Lyarra hadn’t even known what it was that overcame her as he did so. It felt so good she’d seen nothing but white behind her clenched eyelids and was only vaguely aware of the fact that she’d dug her hands into his back as she’d shuddered against him in the barely-warm water.

 

It felt irresistible and powerful, like a storm raging inside of her. It was an entirely different sort of power, though, to what she’d felt when she’d reached down and explored his body. He was nothing like she expected, but she hadn’t known what to expect, had she? Men were strange creatures, and while he’d had all the same parts she recalled Robb having as a boy, they were shaped differently and did far more than allow her husband the privilege of pissing upright.

 

His soft noises and words of encouragement had been wonderful, though. When he’d groaned her name and pushed his hips up into her grip, reaching down to show her how to move her hands, Lyarra had felt like she’d finally beat the man in a spar. His soft moaning and the sweat beading on his forehead had been a triumph in itself. 

 

“As you will.” Lyarra agreed and rose from the tub on shaky legs.

 

Drying him meant  _ seeing _ him, and that was its own revelation. He looked even larger than he’d felt in her hands, jutting up against his belly from a patch of thick black curls. She didn’t have much time to examine him, because he drug her against him for a series of kisses that had her chasing his mouth for more. When he let her go it was to reach for the towels and move closer to the fire.

 

Lyarra took a towel and automatically began chasing the water running down his chest. He patted the curls at the back of her neck dry, and then carried on down her body, turning the process into a caress. Lyarra looked up and frowned, prompting him to raise his eyebrows.

 

“Bend down so I can reach your hair.” 

 

He grinned, but forbore making a joke about her height. Lyarra appreciated that enough to be gentle when she was drying his back. She had scratched him bloody.

 

“Sorry.” 

 

“Just more battle scars I shall show off with pride. My prowess is legendary for a reason.” He promised her, his grin smug, and then Lyarra was in his arms again and his member was trapped between their bellies. “To bed?”

 

“Yes.” Lyarra agreed, then swallowed and gathered her courage to ask a necessary question. “What was that?”

 

“I would think it obvious.” He replied teasingly, rocking her hips against his. “Though if you want to be more specific, I’ve several names-.”

 

_ “No _ .” Lyarra groaned, because his sense of humor was going to be the death of both of them. “What you did to me with your hands. It - I liked it. What was it called.”

 

“Your peak? Pleasure, a little death, it has many names.” Oberyn replied helpfully now that he’d had his jape and kissed her lips again, nudging her towards the bed. “I shall give you another, if you like, when we’re warm beneath the covers.”

 

“I would.” Lyarra breathed, feeling her flush darken and spread down her chest. “May I do the same for you?”

 

“Oh, most certainly.”

 

* * *

 

 

His first thought, other than pure masculine enjoyment, as he slid beneath the covers fully and kissed his way down his new wife’s belly was that he was actually quite lucky that the air was chill that night. Winterfell itself was warm enough, and the fire in the hearth was good, but no-one had apparently planned for a summer snow on the wedding day. It meant that the heating system in the castle had not been adjusted - however that worked, and Oberyn was fascinated to know. Were there plans he could get ahold of?

 

However, with the air cold Oberyn’s ardor had cooled a little out of the bath. He’d slipped a finger into his wife after they’d gotten comfortably in bed and found her tight enough to leave him both deeply enticed and worried. Lyarra had no experience, and if she was so constricted after one orgasm he was afraid that her first night was going to hurt no matter how much care he took. 

 

She tasted wonderfully on his tongue, though. The Viper found his wife clean, fresh, and dripping for him. It was enough to challenge his newly earned plateau and he pushed all thoughts of it aside to concentrate on the task at hand. His pride demanded he fully satisfy his bed partners, and as he had no choice but to call upon her for all of his desires for the rest of their lives he was intent on leaving Lyarra wanting him. 

 

“Oh, Gods,  _ more.” _ Lyarra gasped obligingly, nudging her hips towards him and bending his neck uncomfortably.

 

Oberyn braced one of her hips with his free hand while he felt her fingers tangle into his hair. He grinned against her mound as he spread her open with his free hand and licked a long line over her from back to front. When she mewled his name he fastened his lips around her clit and sucked. It had the desired effect and she writhed under his restraint as he slipped a finger into her again, relieved to find her wetter yet and a little looser. He worked a second finger inside of her and she gasped.

 

“Too much?” He asked.

 

“Get your mouth back on me!” She ordered roughly instead and Oberyn’s eyebrows rose along with his sudden delight at the harsh command.

 

“I do so enjoy a woman who knows what she wants.” 

 

He returned to the task at hand, and was relieved when the third finger made her wince, but she was too busy with one hand upon her own breast and the other clamped over her mouth to seem to notice. He concentrated on matching the movement of his fingers inside of her with his mouth on her, revelling in her pleasure and his own growing need as he pushed her over the edge a second time.

 

While she was lying limp and panting, her legs having slipped off his shoulders and splayed out, he slid up over her and claimed a kiss with her pleasure still smeared all over his lips and chin. She started only slightly before groaning into his mouth. Oberyn curled a forearm beneath her shoulders to better hold her close and proper himself up with as he rolled atop her. 

 

“Yes?” He turned the word into a quiet question against her lips as he lined himself up with a shaking hand.

 

“Mm-hm.” She nodded with their lips still joined, her eyes half-lidded in tired pleasure.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra’s eyes snapped open in shock and her own gasp was covered by the strangled groan her husband let out as he made her his wife. Somehow she’d expected, after nearly two hours of lovemaking and tender touches devoted to her pleasure, that his would be a similarly drawn out affair. Instead, one moment she was a maid - if a debauched one - and the next she was truly his wife by the laws of any of the Seven Kingdoms.

 

It did hurt, but the sting that had to be her maidenhead giving way actually was less significant than the sudden stretch of her as her body worked to accommodate her husband. It was a deep, muscular sort of pain. Not horrible, but the kind of feeling Lyarra was used to associating with straining herself too much in a spar with Robb. Or that time she’d been too stubborn to admit Theon had given her a bow she couldn’t truly draw and had left her shoulders a mass of knotted agony.

 

This wasn’t so bad as either of those things. As her husband moaned into her hair, a slurred string of affection leaving his mouth that she couldn’t decipher due to his accent thickening with passion, Lyarra was able to relax into his arms. She felt every motion as he slowly drew his hips back from hers and then slid inside again. It was nice. Not as good as his hands or mouth, but she arched her hips into it to try and chase the pleasure over the discomfort of having him inside her.

 

“Yes, li-like that!” He gasped and suddenly his hand was fumbling between them. “Ah, my darling,  _ yes- _ .”

 

His words were cut off in a hiss of his own pleasure as he thrust slowly into her again, but Lyarra gasped and lost the concentration she’d been giving the ache as his body pushed and pulled at her own. His hand was back to doing for her what it had done in the tub. That was a far more commanding reality.

 

Individual sensations were lost then, garbled in a new wash of pleasure. In the end, Lyarra was shocked to find her peak a third time, clutching at his shoulders and wrapping her legs tight around his waist in eagerness of it. As she went limp against the pillows in the aftermath her husband changed completely, his hands going beneath her ass and curling around to brace her there. A moment later and he was thrusting into her hard and rough, his movements quick and the pain back. It only lasted a few moments before her husband let out a cry loud enough to surely be heard through stone. 

 

Then Lyarra felt a wetness spreading inside her and had her breath nearly knocked out of her as the full weight of her husband went limp atop her. Oberyn was heavier than he looked, but that made sense. What there was of him was solid muscle.

 

A moment later he was rolling over onto his back, dragging her with him to hold her tight against his chest. Lyarra went willingly enough, and awkwardly slid her leg across his thighs, trying to get comfortable. He let out a deep breath and she felt his hand rubbing across her back before curling behind her shoulders to idly drape a hand over her breast underneath the covers she’d automatically pulled up underneath their chins.

 

“You’re well pleased?” 

 

“Aye.” Lyarra answered the sleepy, slurred question and yawned.

 

Whatever she had been about to say, in thanks or in curiosity, died on her lips at the sound of a soft, snuffling breath. She looked up into her husband’s face, barely lit by the flickering light of the fire and the low-burning candle. It was slack and his eyes were closed. Lyarra muffled a giggle against his chest and reached up to pull down a pillow as she realized that the infamous Red Viper had already fallen asleep.

 

* * *

  
  


"Underneath that Tully hair, the Young Wolf's got some of his Uncle Brandon's blood boiling. Not to mention that little girl of yours!"

 

"Aye." Ned admitted, rubbing a hand over his face as he looked at Lord Glover and blew out a breath. "I'm sorry for your son's ear."

 

"He'll keep his hearing and a cauliflower ear'll teach him to do as his father bids rather than lingering in the yard after a feast to cause trouble. He should have minded his damned manners as I told him." The Lord huffed. "I hope no offense was taken at his words?"

 

"If it was, my son got an answer for it." Ned was more satisfied with that than he should be.

 

"A fine feast, and thinking on it, I think the Smalljon was right." The older Bannerman spoke admiringly. "These Dornish are a strange lot, make no mistake, but they're not a bad one. They'll put a sword in a lady's hand so that she's no easy target, they fight like demons themselves, and they were damned generous for all their Prince's smart mouth."

 

"Aye, we'll not go hungry in this coming winter." Ned agreed, satisfied with that despite his foul mood about the match itself. "My father would have applauded that."

 

"He would have." Glover agreed, but whatever he would have said as they walked towards the Hall to break their fast was stopped when the Lord paused mid-step and chuckled. "Well…"

 

Ser Damien was lingering against a wall, yawning and rolling up a ball of twine. When he saw them both the knight bowed in greeting. Then he grinned.

 

"As we deprived you of a traditional bedding, I consulted with Lord Umber about another Northern tradition we might oblige in as an apology." The knight explained. "Is it to your liking, my Lord?"

 

Eddard Stark stared in unabashed horror at the sheet hanging from across two of the guest house's windows. It was bore all the expected smears of a bridal sheet, red and otherwise. Beside him Lord Glover huffed out a laugh.

 

"You'd have done better to ask myself or Lord Manderly, lad, no-one's hung a bridal sheet in generations south of the Dreadfort!"

 

"Ah," The Knight looked falsely crestfallen. "My apologies. I hope no-one will be distressed?"

 

The clatter of the younger man's copper scalemail as Ned knocked him on his ass with a well-placed blow and then turned to go get his goddamned breakfast was almost as satisfying as Lord Glover's unrestrained laughter. Ned amended his plans for the morning. If Robb wanted to indulge his temper like a man, his son could handle the bannermen for the morning. At least the ones who threw off their hangovers enough to emerge before noon.

 

Ned was going to find his little brother and… he wasn't sure what. Getting drunk was an option. Plotting to murder a snake likely wasn't. It would be nice to find at least one sympathetic ear in all of Winterfell, however.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of Sex Scene: Oberyn offers Lyarra a phial of blood to stain the sheets on their wedding night so she doesn't have to have sex before she's ready. Lyarra decides that he's a good, honorable, desirable man and she'd rather be fully his wife. She's tired of not having a place in the world. They make love and the next morning some naughty Dornishmen get their hands on the bridal sheets and hang them out after having to listen to the Northerners grumble about Oberyn refusing to allow a bedding ceremony to happen.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party's over, time to talk political theory. (And for Oberyn to lose his temper.) 
> 
> Posting this one tonight because tomorrow is going to be hectic at work.

**Chapter Eight - 297 A.C.**

 

"I cannot  _ believe _ you did that."

 

"Ah well, the Northmen were annoying me. It put them nicely in their place." Ser Ulwyk reached up and grabbed a handful of dripping icicles off of the eaves of the nearest building and pressed them to the side of his face as he slumped against the wall. "Dammit, Oberyn, that  _ hurt _ ."

 

"You're lucky it was the butt of the spear." Oberyn growled at the man who had effectively been his Uncle by marriage for nearly two decades and continued to glare the man down. "It was your idea?"

 

"Do you really think  _ Ser Damien _ could have come up with it on his own, and sober? The boy is too courteous for his own good." The older man snorted, then cursed as a bubble of blood came out of his left nostril. "Fuck you, an elbow to the face in a friendly spar?"

 

"I said I wanted to spar, I never said it was  _ friendly _ ." Oberyn replied. "I cannot believe you would put that sheet up like some kind of banner. It's crass and my wife didn't deserve it, even if I likely did."

 

"Was the girl much embarrassed?"

 

Now the half-mad idiot sounded contrite, Oberyn noted sourly. It cooled his anger at the future Lord of Hellholt a little though. Ellaria's brother almost always meant well. His way of going about it was just what you'd expect from a group of people crazy enough to kill a dragon and burn their own keep down  _ twice _ to stop invasion.

 

"Not too badly, but she'd have been far moreso had her brother not gotten that sheet down as quickly as he did." Oberyn complained. "I should tie you down and let the Starks direwolves devour you."

 

"Those things?" Ser Ulwyck laughed. "Oberyn, those pups have barely lost their milk teeth!"

 

"Hence tying you down." Oberyn replied with a grin that was all fang and venom. "Were they full grown it would be a quick sentence. Besides, I'm sure fresh meat is good for growing direwolf pups."

 

"It's when you smile so that people wonder if you'd really do it." Ulwyck observed with an answering grin. "It's also why we like you. So the girl's good for you? You look better than you have in awhile, Brother."

 

Though the man was technically Ellaria's uncle, and not her brother, Oberyn was closer to Ulwyk's age than not. The man had been born as the last in a series of stillbirths bookended by two healthy sons in House Uller. He was seventeen years younger than his elder brother, and only a handful of years older than Oberyn. They'd always gotten on well, and since he'd taken it into his head that the Mark was a communication from his beloved niece from beyond the grave he'd been very favorable towards the marriage.

 

Despite the relief of knowing that the Uller's wouldn't turn their useful brand of madness against his brother's reign, Oberyn could have done without the heartache. He'd woken up late that morning, and felt better rested than he'd felt in two years. Lyarra was a good bed partner. She was small, soft, warm and quiet. She'd anchored him down so he didn't move restlessly as he often did. That had kept Oberyn from waking himself up, and he'd tired himself out enough in teaching her of lovemaking that he'd had no nightmares.

 

"And  _ now _ you look worse again." Ser Ulwyk muttered. "I should take it as a victory considering how you greeted me this morning."

 

"It's afternoon." Oberyn replied dryly and shook his head, stepping back. "Go see a Maester."

 

"I shall, but only because your own punishment is on its way."

 

Oberyn turned his back cautiously on the other man. After he'd stepped out of the way of the last minute strike against his back, and delivered a smack to the man's shins with the shaft of his spear, he turned to look at who was approaching. He was suddenly quite glad Ser Ulwyck preferred live steel. Having the familiar, light, deadly weight in hand of a spear he'd used before to kill a man was nice given the three glowering figures stalking towards him.

 

Oberyn was debating with himself whether he wanted to start a fight while he watched them approach. Robb Stark looked ready to start chewing on the landscape in anger. If Lord Eddard's disapproval became any more intense his mouth would vanish entirely into his beard and his eyebrows crash down to join it. Only Lord Benjen Stark of the Night's Watch managed to look merely displeased.

 

"My lords, what a pleasant surprise." Oberyn greeted and bowed, his gloves creaking a bit against the spear's shaft. "I was told you would be closeted with your bannermen until this evening."

 

"The meeting was yesterday afternoon." Lord Stark was as blunt as ever. "Many of my bannermen have left."

 

"I suppose you lost a lot of time lying abed." Robb Stark said it like it was an insult, but all Oberyn could do in response was smirk happily.

 

He had lost a day yesterday. It was one well-spent, though not in debauching the boy's sister as he thought. After their first night together some of Lyarra's shyness had returned, and then there was the simple reality that she was new to such pleasures. He wasn't going to impose on a maiden still sore from her defloration.

 

They'd spent the day in bed alternately napping, or reading in bed from the small library Oberyn had brought with him. He'd been pleased and surprised to find his wife an avid reader and enjoyed several long and enjoyable conversations with her about his travels. For a girl who'd never gone anywhere nor desired to leave her home, Lyarra Stark was a curious little thing.

 

"I did! However, you need not worry for your sister's comfort." Oberyn couldn't resist. "I assure you, I was  _ everything _ attentive."

 

Robb's face was exactly like Oberyn's daughters had been the first time he handed them a lemon slice and let them find out what it tasted like, the Viper noted gleefully. Lord Stark looked as though the stick lodged up his rectum had turned sideways. Pity he wasn’t adventureous enough to enjoy it. Benjen Stark just looked mildly annoyed at the innuendo.

 

"I wished to speak of our arrangements for the journey to King's Landing." Ned Stark announced bluntly and Oberyn felt his lip curl up into a snarl at the presumption.

 

"You speak hastily on the subject." Oberyn countered and turned to toss the spear in his hand to one of the lingering guards and pull his cloak off the bench he'd draped it over when his match with Ulwyck began. "I have not yet decided that my wife and I are going to the Capital."

 

"It was a summons from the King."

 

" _ You _ were summoned by the King, who apparently misses his foster brother greatly and is quite hurt that you never write." Oberyn didn't bother to keep the scorn out of his voice as they walked through the courtyard and hallways the separated them from Ned Stark's solar. "The letter I received was from the Hand of the King, and Lord Arryn suggested my bride and I  _ might _ find a visit to the Capital pleasant, if I felt my young wife ready for court."

 

"You do not believe my daughter fit for court?"

 

"Given what we know of the man's history in regards to Princesses of Dorne, I wouldn't imagine you so eager to see Lyarra anywhere near the Red Keep." Oberyn mocked with open cruelty as his temper flared. "Unless you've found some way to assure her safety where all failed before?"

 

"I thought we had agreed that our parties would travel south overland together." Lord Stark sounded genuinely angry.

 

"We agreed that I would consider it." Oberyn replied tensely. "I have yet to hear from my brother on the subject. My Prince shall be the deciding factor in whether we take a ship from White Harbor directly to Sunspear, as it would be in his name that I negotiate. If any negotiations are to occur."

 

By the time Stark was left fuming at the entirely reasonable insistence that Oberyn could not and would not negotiate without Doran's command on the matter established, they were at the man's solar. Oberyn was fiercely glad not to see his uncle present in the room. Lord Gargalen was a restraining influence on Oberyn, and that morning he suddenly felt trammeled. He couldn't stand any more politics or prevarication.

 

Perhaps Lyarra's sweetness when she'd come to his bed, and the intense pleasure she'd given him in teaching her how to experience her own, should have left Oberyn languid and relaxed. Instead the Viper found himself filled with a restless energy. The brief fight with Ulwyck hadn't helped settle him, either. He longed to cause actual damage, or for something to simply happen.

 

"I cannot imagine your brother disregarding the King's will." Lord Stark replied mulishly and Oberyn was darkly amused to note both the man's brother and heir looked ready to roll their eyes at him.

 

It appeared that Oberyn wasn't the only one in a changeful, obstinate mood. Good, Oberyn decided. Mayhap he could get something out of the stolid oxen of a man.

 

"Then I must request you use your imagination more, as it seems to have atrophied considerably since you used it to start a revolution." Oberyn lounged in the chair the man had invited him to take in precisely the kind of sprawl he knew Stark hated.

 

"Aerys started the revolution when he murdered my father and brother and declared my life and the King's forfeit."

 

The reply was all stiff offense and Oberyn was delighted to realize he might have actually pushed the man far enough to get him to snap somewhat. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so quick to chastise Ulwyck and Damien for their stunt with the bedsheet. They'd surely deserved it, and he could only apologize to Lyarra again later for the egregious violation of their privacy, but if it moved Stark to blurt something useful, Oberyn could forgive them easily enough.

 

"One could argue your brother started it when he was foolish enough to walk into the castle of a murderous lunatic and demand his son's head." Oberyn smiled humorlessly.

"However, Lord Stark, I notice one great difference of opinion that seems to exist between yourself and the King.  _ Robert Baratheon _ always speaks of the rebellion starting when his beloved intended wife was stolen from him by a rapacious prince. Why do you  _ not _ ?"

 

Beside him Oberyn could feel Robb Stark had gone completely still. Oberyn had, out of graciousness and some little sympathy, not brought Lyanna Stark up in Winterfell. It felt in bad taste to slander the girl now that she was dead. The fact that he was still raw in places that his own Marked wife so resembled her just made it more uncomfortable.

 

Lyarra was her own person in his mind now. She was quiet and introspective where the wolf-girl from the tourney had been wild and brash. The similarities in their features had blurred and faded a bit as he became more familiar with the differences. Oberyn was comfortable enough with his wife wedded and bedded and having shown she wanted him to be precisely the kind of ass he thought Eddard Stark deserved to deal with.

 

"I would think you would understand my reluctance to speak of my  _ sister's _ fate." Lord Eddard said lowly instead of backing down or sidestepping and Oberyn felt his smirk shift into a snarl as he leaned forward.

 

"Did you know that Ser Arthur Dayne was only two weeks my junior, Lord Stark?"

 

"No." Lord Stark frowned, sitting back, surprised by the apparent shift in topics.

 

"Indeed. Lord Dayne sent his younger son to the Water Gardens when he was four. He spent his days there with Elia and I, playing in the pools and pretending sticks were swords and spears. I would pretend I was Morgan Martell and Arthur would be the Sword of the Morning."

 

"He achieved his dream, then." Robb Stark offered, his tone admiring as well as cautious.

 

"Quite." Oberyn agreed, turning to face the Young Wolf and ignoring the irritated expression on the face of the boy's father or the cold tension emanating from the lad's uncle. "Never have I known nor will I likely live to know a more perfect knight than Ser Arthur Dayne. Even as a boy he was always honest and good. He once laid me out cold when we were six because I was pulling the tails off of lizards, even though their tails grow back."

 

"Out cold, at six?" Robb Stark looked torn between being impressed and being amused.

 

"Out cold." Oberyn agreed. "Our Septa nearly wet herself. My sister made him walk barefoot over hot sand as penance for striking his prince."

 

"Did he?"

 

"Yes." Oberyn replied. "My mother made me clean the privies for tormenting harmless creatures."

 

Lord Stark managed a soft, bitter laugh at that, and Oberyn continued. He ignored the Quiet Wolf. The Young one made a far better target here.

 

"Does it strike you as  _ strange _ , Lord Robb, that a boy who couldn't stand to see a lizard hurt without seeking justice would help a man  _ kidnap _ and  _ rape _ an innocent girl?"

 

The Young Wolf's face twisted as he suddenly tried to reconcile the universally respected image of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, with his aunt's reputation in the North.

 

"I was at Harrenhal, Lord Robb, as your father and the uncle who stands behind him." Oberyn went in for the kill. "Nor was I so deep in my cups as our good king. I was returning from paying a lady a late night visit one morning and had gone through the Godswood lest her husband happen to see me leave her tent."

 

The noise of disgust coming from Lord Stark did nothing to stop the growing look of horror on Benjen Stark's face.

 

"I stood in the shadows of a sentinel pine and waited for the Godswood to clear while Lady Lyanna and a dark haired young man knelt before the heart tree and prayed to the Old Gods to break her betrothal to Robert Baratheon. Seldom have I heard so  _ impassioned _ a plea for a girl to escape marriage." Oberyn went on and turned to the Crow. "What was it she called him, Lord Benjen? My memory may escape me, as I am the oldest man in the room. Was it a brutish oaf? A  _ whoremonger _ ? I don't recall exactly, as at the time I thought it of no importance to me or mine that some Northern Lord would sell his daughter into so unhappy a marriage."

 

"Enough!"

 

Lord Stark's fist crashed down upon his desk as he rose to his feet.

 

"You've made your point."

 

"Oh, I've hardly begun!" Oberyn argued, ignoring the shocked and confused lad sitting beside him entirely as he shot up to his full height, leaning towards Lord Stark with bared teeth. "A fortnight is too long to spend mired in your brand of hypocrisy, honorable Lord Stark. Your sister must be a perfect, innocent victim while mine own's killers run free for the sake of a loathsome promise  _ you  _ made to an unworthy King!"

 

"You stand before me a great, noble warrior who was tragically late to save his sister while the Lord Dayne pulled his brother's body from its cairn at that tower to find you'd brought back the family sword but left the truth at the Tower of Joy." Oberyn accused and Lord Stark sucked in a deep breath, his face paling. "Tell me, Lord Stark, did you put the knife in Arthur's  _ back _ that brought him to his knees so Howland Reed could take his head off with Dawn? Or was it the reverse?"

 

Had Oberyn been less firmly in the grips of his own temper he might have noticed the relief that flashed in Lord Stark's gray eyes. Instead he merely pressed forward.

 

"Then there's the matter of your bastard." Oberyn drawled harshly. "Mine own wife. A woman who has lived nearly five-and-ten years never once knowing who her mother was. No word if the woman's alive or dead. No word of what affection she might have carried for her child. Instead you left a motherless girl to wond-."

 

"It's the world that claims my honor perfect." Lord Stark's words were quiet and exhausted. "Prince Oberyn, I've always known it to be broken at best. I am sorry your family must pay for that."

 

"Father-" Robb started, but Oberyn just shook his head in disgust.

 

Lord Eddard Stark stood behind his desk then. His hair was threaded with more gray than Oberyn's, despite being several years younger. His face was lined more deeply and his beard added years to his appearance. Like some icon of sad Northern perfection he just stood there, a martyr to his own noble humility. At his shoulder his brother stood; a thin shadow with angry eyes. Even his son leached the pleasure of the confrontation away, looking at his father with shocked eyes but offering no other response to the inference that his aunt had started a revolution by shirking her duty or that his father had murdered a famed knight.

 

Oberyn swept out of the room at that point, his temper past the point of mere mockery and his intelligence enough to let him know that no good would come from remaining.

 

 

* * *

  
  


"How bad was it?"

 

The first words out of Gwyn's mouth when Lyarra stepped back into the comfortable, familiar confines of their shared room were not auspicious. Her friend's dark blue eyes were wide and worried. Her blonde hair was tucked into a simple braid down her back and she wore a simple green tweed gown and cotton surcoat that spoke of either sneaking into Wintertown or time spent in the kitchens. Gwyn's expression also suggested that she'd been too worried to do either, and the Westerlands girl had likely been up all night fretting.

 

"It doesn't have to have been  _ bad _ !" Sansa countered, her expression offended.

 

Sansa had slipped into the older girl's meeting by dint of pouncing on both of them in the hallway. Lyarra had put a hand firmly on Gwyn's wrist at that point to keep Gwyn from sending Sansa away to complain to Lady Stark about the blonde girl's cruelty. Not to mention because Lyarra really didn't want to see her sweet little sister get the sharp edge of her friend's tongue over her excitement about the wedding.

 

"I mean," Sansa went on. "It was _so_ _romantic_ when he threw the knife and forbade a bedding! He wouldn't let anyone else touch you, and he carried you all the way from the Godswood into the Great Hall!"

 

"He's stronger than he looks." Lyarra offered, because that was the only thing she could think to say.

 

Gwyn paled as she said it. Lyarra put both her hands over her face and groaned. Then, when Gwyn reached for her where they were all sitting in a mass of furs, cushions, and blankets that had been pulled in front of the fire, Lyarra reached out and shoved her friend over.

 

"Not in a bad way, Gwyn!"

 

"Men are almost exclusively bad, and when they're not, they're strange." Gwyn argued.

 

"Is our father strange?" Sansa demanded.

 

"Yes." Gwyn said earnestly, as if it were a terrific compliment. “The strangest I’ve ever known.   
  


"Both of you stop it right now." Lyarra ordered firmly.

 

Gwyn stopped and turned to look at her, immediately ignoring Sansa. For her part, the redhead frowned but gave her half-sister her full attention. Lyarra could have cheered. Gwyn was her best friend, and Lyarra appreciated that she was likely the only person Gwyn really listened to completely and without reservation. Sansa was less likely to listen and take anyone but Lady Stark's words completely to heart, but Lyarra's new title and her marriage had elevated her considerably in her sister's eyes. Not to mention the fact that Sansa wouldn't want to be thrown out of their room.

 

Lyarra realized with a jolt that it wasn't  _ 'their' _ room anymore. She would have to pack her things up soon, as would Gwyn. They didn't live in Winterfell any longer, and when she went to bed this evening, it would be the bed in the Guest House where she'd lost her maidenhead the night before.

 

"He didn't hurt you?" Gwyn asked, shaken out of waiting for further instructions by her eternal need to worry over everything. "You mean that, Lyarra, you aren't just trying to throw yourself on some sacrificial family altar for honor or somesuch?"

 

Sansa made a scandalized noise, but looked at Lyarra with her own concern.

 

"It didn't - it didn't hurt  _ too _ much, did it?" Sansa asked, and then blushed. "I asked Septa Mordane what she was talking to you about, and she told me."

 

"Septa Mordane is  _ full of shit. _ "

 

Gwyn paused to look at Lyarra and Lyarra paused to look at Gwyn as they said the exact same thing at the exact same time. A moment later and the two girls, one blonde and one brunette, were both holding onto each other and laughing. Sansa stared at them as if they were insane, then began to giggle too. It was a nice moment, though it passed fairly quickly.

 

" _ Finally _ , you see reason!" Gwyn joked before her face became serious. "But… he was gentle with you?"

 

"Oberyn was… perfect." Lyarra admitted, feeling herself blush as she thought of the passion and pleasure of the night before, and the unexpected laughter. "Do  _ not _ repeat that anywhere he can hear. He's arrogant enough without any help from me."

 

Sansa just sighed in a way that suggested Lyarra would have to put up with her husband knowing she'd said he was perfect in bed by nightfall. Her sister would be gossiping with Jeyne Poole in short order. Once that happened the Children of the Forest might as well start shouting it from the Heart Tree.

 

"How?" Gwyn was bluntly skeptical.

 

"Yes, how!" Sansa's blue eyes were as avid as Gwyn's were not. "Did he read you poetry?"

 

"Lord Gargalen says his nephew's poetry is awful." Lyarra commented idly, suddenly realizing that - with her little sister here - she couldn't possibly be as blunt as she might have been with only Gwyn there.

 

"Oh." Sansa's face fell, then lit up again. "But he  _ does _ write poetry. Princes should write poetry, and  _ songs! _ Have him write you a song, Lyarra!” 

 

"Yes, Prince Oberyn is a very accomplished man." Lyarra agreed, feeling a hint of real pride at having him as her husband. " _ No _ , I will not be demanding songs  _ or _ poetry from my husband, Sansa. Though, in truth, you wouldn't believe how many languages he speaks! He brought a whole chest of books with him for the journey! He swears he grows bored easily, and that it's best for everyone if he's kept occupied. He has a tome that he'd had shipped from Braavos, copied from a Valyrian medical text that supposedly dates before the Fall-"

 

Sansa's eyes were glazing over, so it was probably just as well that Gwyn interrupted.

 

"So he, like you, is entirely too enamored of ink squiggles on paper." Gwyn shook her head, still obviously concerned. "Lyarra, what happened?"

 

"Oberyn brought a phial of blood to our wedding bed."

 

It came out in a rush. Lyarra still couldn't quite believe he'd done it. The fact that he had left her feeling something she couldn't quite name. The respect had already been there to a certain extent; he was a man proven and a great warrior, after all. This was more than just simple affection, however, and gratitude. Lyarra didn't quite have a name for it, as she knew it wasn't love, but she couldn't call it appreciation, either. What did you name an unexpected gift of yourself?

 

"What? That's strange, why would he do that?" Sansa frowned, then her eyes widened.

 

Gwyn, however, had entered some state of strange shock. First she froze, staring at Lyarra as if she hadn't heard her right. Then she shook her head and bit her lip. Disbelief seemed to be the order of the day.

 

"Why would he do that?" She seemed upset more than anything. "He can't have the marriage annulled. You're  _ Marked _ . Not bedding you would embarrass him, not you, if it came out. Maybe it's something to do with-"

 

"Not everything is political, Gwyn." Lyarra sighed and got a sad look in return that would have been better suited to her face than her lively, sharp-tongued friend.

 

"You only say that because Winterfell is a home, not a court, Lyarra." Gwyn countered. "He may love his daughters, but surely he wants legitimate sons?"

 

"Oberyn's convinced he only throws daughters." Lyarra replied, because they'd talked about it the day before in between reading and napping. "Having no sons is not so great a concern in Dorne. There, a daughter inherits equally with a son."

 

"But still, why-"

 

"Because it was _my_ _choice_." Lyarra replied, her tone passionate and her face flushing as she recalled the moment he'd convinced her that he believed it so. "Not merely as a matter of courtesy to be put aside for duty or for pleasure or because that's how everyone expects it to be. Oberyn brought the phial of blood so that no-one would make us the subject of gossip, but that I would still have time if I didn't want to lay with him on our wedding night."

 

"You're too beautiful for any man to be that decent." Gwyn looked unsure even as she said it, shaking her head and wringing her hands in her lap. "Even your father wouldn't make that offer."

 

"He didn't let them drag Mother through a bedding, though." Sansa was quick to defend her father as her river-blue eyes shot stars into the air around her at this tale of princely kindness.

 

"It was  _ different _ for him, anyway, they were at war." Lyarra added and Gwyn shot her a tired look before shooting another at Sansa out of the corner of her eye.

 

"So… you're still a maid?" Sansa asked, looking a mix of relieved, disappointed, and hopeful.

 

"I didn't say  _ that _ ." Lyarra was sure that she could heat another glass house with how red her face felt. "I'm a married woman, and my husband's a handsome man. He gave me the choice, and I chose not to be fearful."

 

"How bad was it?" Gwyn repeated her first words and Lyarra glared at her, momentarily forgetting she had a sister of not quite two-and-ten in the room.

 

"Spectacular." Lyarra told her friend crossly. "Especially when he used his tongue for something other than inciting violence."

 

Gwyn looked at her in shock.

 

"What was he doing with his tongue, then?" Sansa wanted to know before her blue eyes got wider still in shock and Lyarra realized that there was no way she could explain this to her father without getting his dreaded disappointed look. Possibly this time with a dose of added horror. "You didn't let him put it in your mouth when he kissed you, did you, Lyarra?"

 

"I don't think Lyarra stopped him at using his tongue on her mouth." Gwyn added dryly, looking rather startled even as she japed about it.

 

Sansa's confusion shifted to understanding, and then a shock that transcended verbal description. The next few moments were spent with Lyarra trying not to explain every single detail about her wedding night. Under the combined inquisition of Sansa's pleading and Gwyn's greater skill with words, Lyarra failed miserably. Sansa left the room muttering that everything the Septa had told her was wrong, and Gwyn continued to sit, looking unsure of everything around her.

 

"You're  _ sure _ that he didn't hurt you."

 

This time it wasn't a question and Lyarra nodded, grateful for a brief break from conversation.

 

"You're walking a little funny."

 

"Earned it."

 

Lyarra's guiltily smug reply got a snort of laughter.

 

"I'm glad he took care of you." Gwyn admitted after a little while, looking relieved. "Now we just have to make sure he doesn't stop."

 

"Gwyn, why do you assume everyone has ulterior motive?" Lyarra asked in tired exasperation. "Can't anyone simply be good because that's what they are?"

 

" _ You _ can."

 

"Other than me - and don't say 'Lord Stark'!"

 

"I can't help it if goodness is an inheritable trait in your family." Gwyn managed a smile, but Lyarra didn't intend to let it go for once.

 

"And what about inheritable traits in your family? Aren't you good, beneath it all?"

 

"No." Gwyn said simply. "I'm frightened, and I'm weak, and I'm angry. I'm sneaky, I lie, and I don't feel a bit guilty about doing any of it. The fact that I do it for people I care about as well as for myself is a redeeming quality, not a good one."

 

"I think you've forgotten that I'm the melancholy one."

 

Lyarra's comment teased a laugh out of Gwyn and Lyarra flopped back onto the mound of covers. Gwyn accepted the invitation and curled up with her, resting her head on the older girl's shoulder. Lyarra felt her idly combing out her curls with her fingers and didn't protest. Gwyn generally only did that when she was really upset and couldn't keep her hands still.

 

"Assuming that I'm safe and treated well because I'm valuable, and not because that's how Oberyn would treat anyone, why am I valuable?" Lyarra asked her friend.

 

She'd discovered long ago that Gwyn didn't lay out her logic. Her reasons were clear and she was transparent in why she did things. It usually all boiled down to whether she cared or not, and there was no complexity to examine.

 

The logic for why she made the choices she made was something else. It was all rooted in the past she wouldn't speak of. A past that Lyarra had put aside out of friendship, but was rapidly realizing couldn't stay buried in silence. Word didn't get out of Casterly Rock often and the Lannisters had a lot of enemies. If it wasn't for her father's reputation for absolute honor Lyarra was suddenly sure that Gwyn wouldn't have been allowed to foster at Winterfell. Yes, technically her Great-Uncle was Head of House Parren and could make the decision to transfer her from Casterly Rock to Winterfell without permission from his Lord Paramount. The idea that he'd anger his own Lord Paramount over it when that man was Lord Tywin Lannister was something else.

 

No-one questioned her father's honor, unless they were joking about the existence of his bastard. Given how obvious it was that Gwyn was a shivering, terrified wreck when she was sent to Winterfell, those who'd sent her had to know that her father would ask about it. Equally, they had to know that her father wouldn't press a terrified girl to tell him anything if she didn't want to. Lyarra could now well imagine that anyone who would allow their bannermen, or order their bannermen as Oberyn thought, to do what had been done to her husband's sister… Lyarra could imagine what had been said to make her friend so scared.

 

"You're not using his title." Gwyn answered by changing the subject.

 

"No, he told me not to." Lyarra replied, then thought about it. "I likely still should, in public, don't you think?"

 

"Try it that way first, then correct as he indicates his preference." Gwyn suggested practically and Lyarra nodded. "He really said that you got to choose what he did to you in bed?"

 

"People shouldn't do things  _ to _ each other in bed, Gwyn." Lyarra repeated something he'd said to her as they lay reading together while she was too sore to try again what had so pleased her the night before. "They should do things  _ with _ each other, or not at all."

 

Gwyn had nothing to say to that, so Lyarra changed the subject again. Gwyn happily, if a bit vindictively, regaled her with how Theon's teasing had the men Lyarra's husband had nicked with his knife worried about poison. Maege Mormont, of all people, had gotten in on the torment as well.

 

"Theon convinced the men that they should pour boiling wine on it, to wash the poison out." Gwyn scoffed. "I know almost nothing of poison and even I know that doesn't work. Boiling wine is for when wounds get infected."

 

"So you told them that and sent them to Maester Luwin?" Lyarra offered sarcastically, knowing very well her friend wouldn't have done that to anyone she thought had slighted Lyarra through their behavior.

 

"Of course not." Gwyn grinned proudly. "I convinced them that after we were done with the boiling wine, we needed to rub salt into the cuts to neutralize what the wine didn't. Lady Mormont and Theon were gracious enough to help hold my patients down while I treated them."

 

The idea of anyone trusting Gwyn to treat their ills sent Lyarra into a fit of laughter. Her friend soon joined her. Lyarra reported that her wedding dress was in perfect condition, a rare gift for any bride in Westeros north of the Red Mountains, and Gwyn beamed and promised to tell Sansa. They'd put a lot of work into the dress and had been unhappily anticipating its destruction. Lyarra waited until her friend had relaxed before pressing again.

 

"Gwyn, why am I valuable?"

 

"Didn't forget?"

 

"Not going to."

 

There was a long pause and, just as Lyarra decided to accept her silence, her friend spoke very quietly into the sunlit warmth of the room that was no longer quite theirs.

 

"The Dornish  _ hate _ King Robert." Her words weren't what Lyarra was expecting. "And he's not a good King. He's six million gold dragons in debt, he handled the greyscale sickness badly, and he hasn't changed his spending or how he acts even though everyone suffered from the Plague."

 

Lyarra was very quiet, waiting to see if her friend went on.

 

"The Queen," Gwyn nearly spat the title, "is hated as well. King's Landing was starving, the plague was raging, and she had her dead children carried to their tombs in the Great Sept on a  _ solid gold litter _ ."

 

"Meanwhile, Prince Doran sits in the South as the most loved man in Westeros. He didn't just save the nobles, he didn't sell the cure when he found it. Instead he inoculated  _ everyone _ . Only your father started inoculating the smallfolk at the same time they started on the nobility. Every other lord, even Lord Arryn and Lord Tully, only allowed innoculations of their smallfolk after their own families and bannermen were clear. By the time they got around to it, Prince Doran's Gift had already arrived, herded into town by other smallfolk trained in how to do the inoculations."

 

"What does this have to do with why  _ I'm _ valuable?" Lyarra asked, but she had a terrible feeling bubbling up in her gut as she listened to Gwyn's tired, dispassionate speech.

 

"The Reach isn't loyal to anyone but the Reach." Gwyn explained, turning to look at her with those eternally worried, calculating blue eyes. "Lord Stannis is dead of the plague, and so is his wife. With him went the watchdog that the King used to keep track of the Stormlands. His daughter's been sent to his younger brother in Storm's End. Lord Renly Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands, is wroth with his brother for forcing him to give the Crown a loan they could hardly afford."

 

"The Vale of Arryn has no direct heir. Lord Arryn's line is spent, his sister's line is spent. His bannermen are scouring their family trees trying to see how far back their own Arryn ancestors are as they prepare a dozen different claims."

 

Lyarra felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to rise as Gwyn just went on talking.

 

"Hoster Tully is a strong, capable, intelligent lord. He's also old. I don't know what Edmure Tully is like, but nobody really sounds impressed with him. That's important, as what people think of you can indicate the kind of support you get when things go dreadfully wrong."

 

"The Westerlands follow the Lannisters, and the Lannisters care only for themselves. So they will support the Queen and her remaining son, even if they've little care or liking for the King. " Gwyn's eyes fixed on Lyarra then, deadly serious. "Then there's the North. It's been barely hit by the plague. It's bannermen are strong and have their full population to call upon if they should need to. They're also loyal, and they will answer your father should he call them."

 

"Gwyn, why would my father need to call his banners?" Lyarra asked carefully.

 

"Perhaps he won't." Gwyn shrugged and sat up, her hand shaking as she clenched them in her lap. "But if a man would go to war for a dead father and brother, and swear an oath he hates for a shamed sister… What would he do for a beloved daughter?"

 

"You think I'm a hostage. Like Theon." Lyarra felt ill.

 

She'd thought about it before, but that was just in terms of idle imagination. Noble marriages between Great Houses were always a careful balance of power and negotiation and trust. In effect each bride and husband was a hostage in kind, because no-one would be a kinslayer.

Hearing Gwyn lay out the strengths and weaknesses like that… Hearing her reduce kingdoms into the balance unnerved Lyarra immensely. Nor was Gwyn done unnerving her.

 

"I think it would appeal to Prince Oberyn's sense of justice to hold you and the children he gives you over your father's head when they finally make a move for fifteen years of denied justice."

 

"Gwyn, where do you even hear these things?!" Lyarra finally exploded, standing up and wanting to deny the whole thing. She found that she couldn't.

 

"I heard some of it from the Dornish themselves. They're a tight-lipped crowd, but they make no secret of how they hate the King." Gwyn shook her head as she continued to sit, shaking. "They call him 'The Usurper' openly, unless someone from your father's household is nearby."

 

"And you don't count?"

 

"Only if they see me."

 

" _ Gwyn… _ " Lyarra wasn't sure what to say.

 

"Some of it I heard from Lord Stark." Gwyn went on. "Most everything about the kingdom and strategy and how big the Crown's debt is came from your father. Since you were busy, I took Ghost out to romp around a little in the courtyard beneath the Broken Tower. Nobody goes there near the entrance to the crypt, but I could hear your father and uncle talking down there so I crept down-."

 

" _ Gwyn!" _ Lyarra was scandalized.

 

Listening around corners was one thing, but to creep up on what was obviously a _secret_ _conversation_ around their dead _kin_ …

 

"-and they were talking about war." Gwyn finished. "Lyarra, be  _ careful _ . War has not been kind to Princesses of late."

 

"Is it ever?"

 

"I don't know, I only learned to read two years ago." Gwyn snorted. "I haven't graduated to those great, huge history books you favor yet."

 

Lyarra groaned, burying her face in her hands as she tried to deal with the great tangled mass of information and feelings that had just been dumped on her. It didn't help that in the background she could sense a growing well of anger building. Something, and she didn't know what but she had a terrible feeling it was likely a family member, had left her husband so furious that even the unreliable and new bond she shared with her soulmate was relaying his temper clearly.

 

Gwyn was talking, however, and Lyarra decided she might as well go for broke.

 

"Gwyn, answer me truthfully." Lyarra pulled her hands away from her face to look her friend in the eye. "Do you know who killed the Princess Elia and her children?"

 

"If I tell you that," Gwyn offered sadly, "Then _ I _ don't have any value, do I?"

 

 

* * *

  
  


Oberyn's earlier plans for the day had included lying about and generally making Lord Stark dyspeptic by giving every evidence of a man deliriously happy to have bedded his beautiful young wife. He would break this up by planning his return by ship to Dorne - he had no desire at all to go anywhere near the Usurper or that cursed castle. This would include some time alone where he found out if his wife had made any attempt at living up to her word about pressing the Parren girl for information on Elia's killers. Then, assuming Lyarra was not so sore as she'd been the day before and he was still in the mood for it after their other conversations, Oberyn frankly wanted to make love to her again.

 

Waking up to find out that a maid had handed the bridal sheets off to Ulwyk and Damien had been drunk enough to have the things hung up as a banner to his virility had not started the day off well. His temper already raw with the disrespect inherent in that act, then lost half its control with the Starks. A raven from Doran telling him to go south with the insufferable, rigid asshole who was now his goodfather had done the rest of Oberyn's self-control in nicely.

 

He'd snarled at his Uncle. He'd been insufferable to several other members of his own party. Then, having exhausted even his own tolerance for himself, he borrowed a horse and took an ill-advised, hell-for-leather ride through the Wolfswood against his better judgement. Despite his hopes, however, he ran into no brigands nor slavering beasts. All it accomplished was exhausting his horse and leaving Oberyn himself tired enough that he felt safe to return to the keep, if not to join anyone in the Hall for meals.

 

Returning to his quarters, he was surprised to see a small white head with pointed ears and a little black nose appear from the foot of the bed. He was more surprised yet to see his wife sprawled out beneath the covers, pale, with a cold compress covering her eyes. Suddenly he realized, out of nowhere, that the dull hint of a headache that had been plaguing him for the last two hours was likely not his own.

 

"Lyarra, what is it?" He pitched his voice low and approached the bed carefully, some of his temper cooling at the idea something was wrong with her.

 

The slow-growing fondness he had for the girl aside, she was his wife. It was his duty to protect her. If he'd been out indulging his temper while something happened, he wouldn't even fault Robb Stark if his young goodbrother attempted to run him through for it.

 

"Tried to talk to Gwyn." His wife pulled the cloth off her forehead, wincing at the red light from the sinking sun that was slanging through the windows. "Got a headache."

 

"She's part Lannister; you were likely quite lucky." Oberyn couldn't help his bitter reply, or the eager injunction that followed. "Did she tell you anything?"

 

"She thinks I and my children will be hostages for your future war with the Crown, and that if she gives up any valuable information you'll either send her away or kill her. Oh, and she didn't confirm or deny having that information, either." The Stark bluntness was strong with his wife at that moment as she covered her eyes again and sank back into the pillows.

 

Prince Oberyn Martell stood there for a moment, carefully weighing everything his wife had just said.

 

"The partial maester's chain I forged had silver links." He said quietly, leaning down and gently pressing a kiss to the hair at the crown of his wife's head while his mind began to click and whirr with thought. "I'm going to get my case and fix you something for that headache. It will likely put you to sleep, but if it is bad enough for the light from the windows to be painful, I don't imagine you'll mind."

 

" _ Thank you _ ." His wife's quiet gratitude was clear.

 

Walking into the small sitting room that came with their suite, Oberyn walked to the locked wood and leather case that sat upon a table far from the windows and their light. As he checked the contents of various bottles and phials he carefully pushed the tension out of his shoulders, down his arms, and out of his posture altogether. While he measured out careful portions of two phials and a little powder from a small tightly-fitted wooden box, he reflected on how much more difficult several things had gotten, and how this changed things.

 

Tomorrow he had to plan for several tasks that would not be over quickly. The first was an overland journey for his party from Winterfell to King's Landing. The second would be reassuring his wife that she was more than a hostage, despite the fact that a good deal of why he'd come so willingly to an unwanted wedding was the politics behind taking her to wife. Finally, he had to figure out some way to get the most critical step to getting Elia's Justice from the grips of a young girl whose fears were rooted in some very logical facts.

 

Deciding he was in no mood for dinner and his sympathetic headache was going to get worse before it got better, Oberyn measured out a portion of his concoction for himself and joined his wife in bed. It wasn't what he'd hoped he would be doing between the fresh sheets that night, but the direwolf pup was warm where it sprawled across their feet amongst the furs and his wife allowed herself to relax into his arms again after only a quarter hour of suspicious stiffness. By the time sleep took them both Oberyn was no closer to being relieved of his frustrations and anger, but he was at least sure he had something resembling a plan to deal with it all.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb and Lyarra talk. Ned and Oberyn talk. Lyarra and Oberyn talk. Everyone talks!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post. RL's been a bear.

**Chapter 9 - 297 A.C.**

 

The wind whipped Lyarra's hair behind her, twisting and twining with the curls. It would be a wild, knotted mess by the time she got back to Winterfell. Gwyn would fret and Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria would likely click their tongues at her for looking so little like a princess, though they would also look upon her with less disapproval than Lady Stark ever did.

 

The cold air smelled like pine and untamed space. With a sudden wave of hapless grief, Lyarra wondered if she would ever smell the Wolfwood again. As soon as it could be arranged, Lyarra was due to leave Winterfell with her husband. She would have her father with her and Ayra, and Bran, but she would lose Robb.

 

She'd never lived more than a few days of her life separate from her closest brother before.

 

"You're going to break your neck!"

 

Summoned by her thoughts, her brother's worried shout reached her and Lyarra turned to shout back at him over her shoulder, grinning through a cloud of her own curls.

 

"You're going to lose!”

 

"LIke hell!"

 

Then nothing mattered to Lyarra but laughing and staying on the horse that was her father's wedding present. Ash was everything Lyarra had wanted in a horse her whole life, but never would have dared asked for or expect. The big mare was perfect.

 

Ash was no delicate palfrey. Instead Lord Stark had bought from the Ryswell's a mare bred of coursers. A descendant of warhorses, the big, fleabitten gray horse was tall and strong, but not so heavy as a true warhorse would have been. Long-legged, deep of chest, and with powerful haunches, she was made for speed and power without the weight meant to carry a man in plate armor.

 

Robb's coarser, a great black beast, was much of a height with Ash. It was also several stone heavier. Lyarra grinned to herself wildly as she felt Ash pull further forward past Robb and the guards they'd left behind on the trail half a mile before. Theon was no doubt giving them a merry chase in the opposite direction with Arya's help. Robb had said he wanted time to talk to his sister in privacy, and Arya and Theon were obliging them.

 

The path was a familiar one, crossed twice by fallen limbs and cleared by years of game carving a trail through the Wolfswood. She had to watch for low hanging branches with her hair undone, but otherwise their race track was as familiar as the walkways atop Winterfell's walls. Behind her she listened to her brother curse as he realized there was no way he was going to catch her. Lyarra whooped her victory as she crossed beneath the arch of two leaning sentinel pines. They guarded the entry into the ending point of most Stark family races.

 

It was Uncle Benjen who'd showed Lyarra the broad clearing. The meadow had, apparently, been a favorite place of her Aunt Lyanna's. It was a broad, green space with moss and low grasses mixed together in a lush carpet, surrounded on one side by a tumbled mass of broken boulders from a hill long since crushed by time. The other side of the roughly triangular meadow was bound by a broad, rocky streambed. Finally, a heavy thorn thicket, three times wider than a man was tall, guarded the last side of the meadow.

 

The thicket was rich with blackberries, snowberries, and frost berries. Tangled all through the brambles were flowering vines with tiny silver-white blooms. Gwyn had been delighted when Lyarra had first shared the meadow with her. While Lyarra and Robb had taught Arya swordplay and Theon lounged around with Bran on the spread blanket to listen to him chatter on about whatever he'd been learning, Lyarra's friend had filled a large basket with blackberries. Later they'd had tarts.

 

Thinking of Gwyn somewhat spoiled Lyarra's good mood as she sat atop Ash, sliding down to walk the mare. Robb appeared a few seconds later, still swearing creatively. When he slid down from his own black horse he didn't move in to walk beside her. Robb had graduated from a gelding to a war stallion of his own, and his beast had terrible manners. Though Ash wasn't in heat they'd likely have to tie them quite a bit apart to make sure Robb's horse behaved.

 

"You cheated." Robb announced.

" _ How _ ?" Lyarra scowled.

 

"By being unnaturally skinny." Robb replied, suddenly grinning and using Theon's favorite sally against her. "If you were built properly your horse wouldn't have thought it riderless."

 

"Forgive me for not being appropriately buxom." Lyarra instantly shot back the usual rejoinder. "Though if my husband has no complaints, I don't see how my brother's opinion matters."

 

Robb's face reddened and Lyarra's went with it. For a brief moment she'd forgotten that she had a husband. Moreover, as she recalled that she was fully a wife, she also realized how truthful her statement had been. Oberyn had shown every sign of finding her breasts and the curve of her ass more than adequate.

 

"Gentle, merciful Gods, we can  _ never _ use that joke again." Robb croaked, a hand rubbing his face as his ears all but glowed. They were even redder than the auburn of his hair.

 

"Agreed."

 

Lyarra's meek acquiescence prompted Robb to clear his throat. Lyarra then found herself extremely busy with getting Ash's bit out of her mouth so she could drink and graze. A long rope was found and employed to keep her in place. Robb, meanwhile, took his own horse some distance away and tied the stallion up with a somewhat shorter lead.

 

"You wanted to talk?"

 

"I  _ need _ to talk, I  _ want _ to spend time with my brother." Lyarra clarified and a moment later was wrapped in one of Robb's warm, all-encompassing hugs.

 

Her brother wasn't yet as broad as her father, but he was growing stronger. Lord Eddard Stark had years on his son to pack on hard-won muscle. If there was a little bit of padding there as well, Lyarra wasn't going to comment. It was Uncle Benjen's job to imply their father was getting fat, and Lyarra wouldn't intrude on a special joke between brothers.

 

"Did he hurt you?" Robb's concern was everything an older brother's ought to be. "When I saw that sheet hanging out like some obscene banner-"

 

"Don't blame my husband for that." Lyarra blushed, but felt herself smile a little. As awful and embarrassing as the sheet was, the aftermath had been a little funny. "Ser Ulwyck's hot-tempered and didn't like some of the complaints that our bannermen were giving about being denied a bedding ceremony. I don't know why he hit upon doing that as some kind of revenge, but he did. My Prince gave him a black eye and I think he may have cracked a rib."

 

"I'd do worse, if father hadn't forbade it." Robb muttered, scowling. "Ser Damien was involved as well."

 

"Aye, but he was drunk and apologized to me later with no prompting." Lyarra grinned as she buried her nose against the fur of her brother's cloak, letting the embrace stretch on and smelling the unique mix of woodsmoke, clean soap, wool, and sweaty boy that was her brother's scent. Given that she'd stolen another of his tunics for the ride, she felt surrounded by her brother; it was reassuring. "Oberyn gave him a nasty spill in the yard, as well. Then the rest of the party weighed in."

 

"Indeed?"

 

"Lady Jynessa lectured the seven hells out of both of them like they were mere boys and Lady Myria's cooking up some revenge of her own, I'm sure. She hadn't even heard of a bedding ceremony and is all over horror at it." Lyarra explained. "Ser Deziel is very protective of ladies as well; his paramour was apparently a slave for a time before she escaped Essos for Dorne. Then there's Ser Arron."

 

"I would not offend Ser Arron Qorgyle without an  _ extremely _ good reason." Robb agreed, his tone serious before becoming eager. "Was he much offended?"

 

"Yes." Lyarra told him, smiling. "His wife is the Lady of Ramblerock up above the Prince's Pass and he's got four daughters by her. He has strong opinions about how to treat women, and he's to be my personal guard on the journey. I've found I rather like him."

 

"I don't know him at all." Robb muttered.

 

Lyarra spent the next few moments describing the members of the Dornish party Robb hadn't gotten a chance to become familiar with. Lord Gargalen he knew well, and the ladies he'd spoken with at length at the table on more than one occasion. Ser Deziel was one who joined them often in the yard, and was a gregarious man.

 

Ser Arron was not gregarious, nor was he a handsome, courtly man as most of the other party was. A hard-bitten warrior, Ser Arron Qorgyle had married an heiress but refused the title of lord. His wife, he insisted, was the Lady of Ramblerock, and he was there to be her husband and her protector, not her lord or guardian.

 

He was a serious man by nature, with a broad, hard face, and salt and pepper hair despite being in his mid-thirties. The Dornish knight's appearance had been taken to another level of intimidating by his scars. A battle axe had taken one of his eyes and drawn his lips up into a cruel, lunatic's grin on one side of his face. Worse, when the maesters were healing his eye they'd pulled the lid down over the gap and then cauterized it with hot steel. Ser Arron Qorgyle rarely wore a patch over the roughened, seamed and scarred skin that covered the cavity where his eye had been.

 

"So, he's trustworthy." Robb frowned contemplatively.

 

"I believe so." Lyarra reassured him, but felt her good mood crumple a bit as her conversation with Gwyn of two days past crept back into the front of her mind.

 

"Lyarra, what is it?"

 

"You first." Lyarra decided. "You wanted to talk too, and not just because I've had no time to talk to hardly anyone who can't sew or give me a lesson on being a grand lady since this Mark appeared on my wrist."

 

Robb nodded, but reached up to tug at his hair a bit before he finally wandered over near the stream. A series of large, smooth rocks sat there. They were the perfect height for chairs. Lyarra wondered if the rocks had been worn smooth in the past when the stream was a river and flowed over them, or if generations of Stark children had sat on them until they'd submitted to a more comfortable shape.

 

"Your husband's been in a foul temper."

 

"Has he  _ ever _ ." Lyarra huffed and rolled her eyes, then saw Robb's concern and realized he hadn't likely seen the same side of it that she had. "He's not done me any harm, Robb, he's just been sharp-tongued, and he won't allow me to spar with him or any of the other knights of his party when he's in such a mood."

 

That one had stung a little. Oberyn had told her she had real talent with a blade. Then, as soon as he wasn't in a playful mood, he sent her away from the yard like a child. If she was old enough to bed, Lyarra felt, she was surely old enough to fight. What did his temper have to do with it?

  
  


"Perhaps with you that's all he's been." Robb muttered, worrying her, and then adding. "But I'm glad for it. He is treating you well?"

 

"Yes, though I see him little during the day. My lessons with Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria take up so much time."

 

Lyarra desperately wanted more time with her siblings before she left Winterfell. The thought of spending years without them was like a physical wound, it hurt so badly. Would Rickon even recognize her the next time he saw her? Would she ever seen any of her family again in person, beyond Arya?

 

"And at night?" The question seemed to physically pain Robb.

 

"He's done me no wrong." Lyarra blushed, but absolutely did not want to be more specific than that with her brother.

 

In the four nights that had passed since her marriage, Lyarra had spent more time sleeping than anything else when she shared her husband's bed. Despite his reputation, the Viper hadn't imposed himself on her. Instead, the first night after Lyarra had chosen to give him her maidenhead, her husband had been nothing but understanding. She was sore, and he'd accepted that.

 

The next night Lyarra had spent in a drugged sleep, fighting the migraine that her unwilling lesson in politics from Gwyn had given her. Or rather, the headache that had come from trying to figure out what was real and what was Gwyn's fears leading her. Lyarra had learned long ago that Gwyn was a wonderful friend and would do anything for her, but that she wasn't reasonable when something scared her.

 

Then Oberyn had spent a good portion of the next day out in the practice field with members of his party. He'd had little conversation with anyone, and Lyarra had found Ser Deziel gently ushering her out of the yard. It had been a disappointment. Lyarra had wanted to watch, as the match she'd seen shaping up had been her husband facing no less than four of the knights who'd accompanied him. She'd wanted to see if he could really win such a match; from the looks on the faces of his opponents, it was a strong possibility that he could.

  
  


Then night had fallen and her husband had returned to bed seeking only sleep and to put his cold feet all over her in an attempt to warm his toes. Lyarra had slept as well, anticipating another quiet night and beginning to fear her husband didn’t truly desire such a young wife at all. It was a fear she learned was rather misplaced.

 

Just a few hours before sending Arya to wake her brother for an early morning ride, however, Lyarra had been otherwise occupied. It made her blush to recall waking up to her husband's lips wandering over her shoulders in a silent request. It made her want to hide her face in her sleeve at how eagerly she'd agreed.

 

"That's  _ good _ ." Robb was visibly relieved as he scrubbed a hand over his face, then scowled. "If I could say the same for his behavior elsewhere, I'd be happier."

 

"What did he do?" Lyarra demanded.

 

She knew that her husband disliked her father. She understood why. That didn't mean that she had to like how Oberyn baited those she loved. Lyarra was merely cautious about upending or spoiling her marriage before it started, and her father himself had cautioned her not to let old grief damage new bonds. It was likely no other man in Westeros took the idea of accepting responsibility for one’s actions as Lord Eddard Stark.

 

"Where shall I start the list?" Robb groused. "He's moved past simply baiting father. Now he's outright arguing about the Rebellion…"

 

"And?"

 

"And," Robb sighed, wincing, "He brought up Aunt Lyanna."

 

Lyarra winced with him. It was an unspoken rule in the family not to bring up her father's dead siblings. If he chose to talk about them, that was encouraged, but it had long been agreed amongst Ned Stark's children not to bring up the topic themselves. It hurt their father too much to prod at old wounds.

 

"I'm not surprised." Lyarra admitted. "The Dornish don't, well, they don't badmouth her before me, but it's obvious that they hold her in scorn. They universally believe she left with Prince Rhaegar willingly."

 

"I don't know if that's better or  _ worse _ ."

 

"I don't know, either." Lyarra said mournfully, her mind tangled up with the same concern that had risen since she'd realized how the woman she so resembled was viewed. "If she left with Rhaegar willingly, then she wasn't raped. It means that she disobeyed her father, shirked her duty, got half her family killed horribly, and then started a war that killed tens of thousands… What do you think happened?"

 

Robb didn't answer at first, and Lyarra was surprised. It had taken real work on her part to hold her tongue when she'd heard some of the discussion about her aunt. Lyanna Stark was a martyr in the North, a tragic tale of beauty gone wrong and an innocent maid despoiled and stolen from her kin. Her own Lord Father had spoken of how heartbroken the King was, and how he'd loved Lyanna Stark.

 

"Prince Oberyn claimed that while he was in Harrenhal he'd heard Aunt Lyanna praying in the Godswood there for her betrothal to King Robert to be broken."

 

Lyarra gasped and caught her brother's blue eyes, which were narrowed almost in pain.

 

"He claimed Uncle Benjen was there, but Uncle Benjen wouldn't tell me." Robb looked troubled. "Instead of answering, Uncle… well."

 

"Yes?"

 

"He talked about how, if Aunt Lyanna had run away, what would that mean for our family's name?" Robb blurted out at a pained whisper, his eyes carrying a new weight. "Think about it politically, Lyarra. If Aunt Lyanna ran away, then the betrothal was broken. That's an enormous shame on the family. It also means that Uncle Brandon had no grounds to threaten the Prince, and his imprisonment was justified by King Aerys. Not that the execution or madness can be justified, but it casts a lot of the Rebellion itself into doubt! Everyone lost kin in the Rebellion, and our banners foremost among them. What if those deaths were useless?"

 

Lyarra shivered at the idea, her breath caught in her throat.

 

"Nor was the Viper done at that. Father lied by omission when he claimed to have killed Ser Arthur Dayne in single combat. Apparently someone stabbed the Sword of the Morning in the back instead."

 

"Oberyn claimed what?!" Lyarra hissed in outrage.

 

"Father confirmed it." Robb went on miserably, the blue pools of his eyes still and sad. "He said we'd talk about his reasons later, but…"

 

In the North, when you were fighting for your life, you didn't waste semantics on honorable combat. At least, you didn't to a great extent. Lyarra felt torn. On one hand, battle was battle and you fought to save your life and the lives of those you fought beside. Northerners didn't play games or fight in pointless tourneys because their skills were for warfare, and best kept hidden until needed. When you lived in a harsh place like the North, survival came first.

 

Still… to stab someone in the back in one-on-one combat... Presuming that the wound wasn't fatal, but bad enough to shift the fight, if your opponent was honorable it was expected in the North that you were to bind and save them in such an instance. Lyarra felt as if her world had tipped to the side, and she didn't like it. Her father’s honor had  _ never _ been questioned, save where she was concerned...

 

"Father was in the  _ Vale _ when all of this happened." Lyarra swallowed. "Then he went directly to war. Whatever happened with Aunt Lyanna, he believed he was fighting men who'd help a man abduct and rape his little sister. Father's actions weren't perfect, but they're understandable."

 

As Lyarra had hoped, Robb looked reassured. He also looked like he was ready to think about it, rather than just be upset. Lyarra herself felt off-balance over the whole thing. She knew now that she couldn't have been Lady Ashara Dayne's babe, but she'd spent no small part of her childhood dreaming about some relation to that family and had a soft spot for the legends of the man who might have been her uncle. To find out her father had lied about his manner of death…

 

"Yes." Robb breathed out and nodded.

 

"Has my husband done anything else?" Lyarra asked, nervous.

 

"He's made it clear that he has no desire to travel overland in a party with Father, and continued to heckle him over your mother's name." Robb's tone turned bitter. "He wants to bundle you aboard a ship straight to King's Landing, get whatever negotiations he has with the King over with, and then rush you off to Dorne and away from your  _ family _ ."

 

Lyarra felt a wave of misgiving pass over her, and unfortunately Robb caught it.

 

"Lyarra, what is it?"

 

"Gwyn has a theory."

 

Lyarra summarized everything Gwyn had told her the night before. How the Dornish still resented and hated the Usurper for how Princess Elia and her children had died. How the state of the crown's finances and the plague deaths within the royal family left the succession unstable. How the Great Houses of Westeros had fallen or risen in disposition and strength since the Rebellion. By the end Robb was gray around the face and his lips were white.

 

"Lyarra, you're talking  _ war _ ."

 

"No,  _ Gwyn _ was talking war, and you know how she always sees everything turning out as bad as it can possibly be." Lyarra argued, but misliked the lack of surety in her own tone. "If I'm melancholy, Gwyn's… well, you know how she is."

 

"Terrified and easily startled." Robb filled in, but didn't relax. "She usually doesn't pull her fears out of thin air. Lyarra, what did Gwyn overhear?"

 

"Gwyn and I are going to have a long talk about who she can and can't eavesdrop on." Lyarra replied pertly. "You should sit-in, Robb. She was out playing with Ghost near the Old Tower and overheard Father and Uncle Benjen talking in the crypts. She actually snuck down to eavesdrop on them!"

 

Robb's expression was a mix of outrage and worry. He stood up and paced for a few minutes. Watching her brother agitated actually relaxed Lyarra a little. If nothing else, Robb was Heir. He was meant for this sort of thing, and watching him sit down again to face her calmly underlined that. Robb would make a good Warden, as his father before him, one day. Hopefully a day far in the future.

 

"Gwyn shouldn't eavesdrop on her lord, but Father should have talked to  _ me _ about this as well as our Uncle." Robb's answer surprised her, as did the pragmatic sort of expression that had replaced the outrage and hurt on his face. "Don't look like that, Lyarra, we don't bat an eyelash when Gwyn spies on Mother. Strictly speaking, as a lady in the household where she is a fosterling, Gwyn should be more loyal to Lady Stark than anyone, but here we are."

Lyarra didn't bother to point out that Gwyn was loyal only to who Gwyn wished to be loyal to. They all knew how Gwyn's mind worked, even if they didn't understand it. They also all knew that Gwyn's first loyalty was to  _ Lyarra _ rather than any of the people who she technically owed fealty and respect to.

 

"Here we are." Lyarra allowed, then bit her lip. She felt obligated to tell Robb the rest, though she didn't think it was true… "Gwyn thinks that the Prince and his kin intend to use me as leverage. Like Theon is leverage against his father."

 

The pragmatic expression vanished off Robb's face. He was on his feet in a second. This time his pacing was aggressive, as if he were only a thin minute away from mounting his horse and riding away to face down her husband and demand some kind of satisfaction.

 

"I won't have it!" Robb turned, his lips pulled back in a wolfish snarl that emphasized the length of his jaw over the color of his hair and eyes, or the freckles on his nose. "He'll not take you off to Dorne and lock you in some tower to bend the North into treason."

 

"Robb!" Lyarra interjected, realizing that - for once - it was the wolf's blood that had Robb in its grip and not his usual thoughtful nature.

 

"No!" Robb shook his head. "I won't have the  _ bastard _ use you like that, Lyarra."

 

"He's not a bastard, Robb." That one had stung a little, and Lyarra rose to her own feet.

 

"He's sired enough of them."

 

"So has Father." Lyarra shot back and Robb paused, his expression briefly displaying regret before settling into angry lines again.

 

"You know I didn't mean it that way. Also, one’s not the same as  _ eight. _ " Robb argued. "You're my sister. I've never known a life without you. Giving you up to someone worthy of your hand - or as close to it as any man could get - is bad enough. But an aging viper with a poisonous tongue and a bad attitude? No, I'm done letting him  _ disrespect _ and  _ manipulate- _ "

 

"And what do you intend to do?" Lyarra had finally had enough and just interrupted. "Robb, shut your mouth and think! He's a  _ Prince _ . A seasoned man of almost forty years who's fought in wars here and in Esoss as well. His reputation is well-deserved, and you've barely kept your feet, let alone your sword, in the sparring yard with him for long as is!"

 

Robb looked nettled at that, but he wasn't giving up.

 

"If we came at him together, we could both take him."

 

"An invitation my husband would deeply appreciate, then sadly reflect that the Marks he and I share would keep him from fully enjoying it."

 

The words were out of Lyarra's mouth before she could stop them. Robb's eyes widened and then closed as if in pain. Slowly color rose into his cheeks, blotting out the freckles.

 

"I could have lived my entire life pretending those rumors weren't true." Robb complained. "Doesn't it bother you?"

 

"I wish he wouldn't flirt with Father, but then again, so does Father." Lyarra reached up and rubbed her own pink face. "That's why he does it. When he flirts with you, on the other hand-"

 

" _ Stop _ . Stop right there." Robb ordered her, and sat down again. Lyarra followed suit. "I surrender. Still, answer my question, does it shame you when he behaves so?"

 

Lyarra considered it carefully, nibbling on her bottom lip as she thought. She was tempted to find a stick and pull out a knife. Even if all she did was whittle a whistle or shave kindling for her firekit she'd feel better to have her hands occupied.

 

"If he were courting me, or either of us had a chance to choose, I think I would be more upset." 

 

Lyarra allowed and turned to look at the Mark on her wrist. Idly she reached down and began to gently twist the heavy ruby ring on her left third finger as well. Having never done it before, she found the repetitive gesture was comforting. She also liked watching the rich gleaming bits of color and light thrown off by the ruby; it painted blood red rainbows across her fingers and clothing.

 

"Or maybe if I felt something before… Being Marked is different, Robb. I know some of what  _ he _ feels. It comes in flashes and I don't understand it yet, but… he means me no harm or shame when he does so. He's very bitter about having his own choices taken away and his life decided for him by the Gods, but he never takes it out on me. He even…"

 

"Even what?" Robb looked both hopeful and worried and Lyarra just accepted that her face was going to turn redder than his hair and went and said it.

 

"He brought a phial of blood to our marriage bed." Lyarra breathed quietly. "He told me that it was my choice, ever and always."

 

Robb stared at her in blank shock, then visibly relaxed.

 

"So the sheet?"

 

Lyarra shrugged, deciding to let Robb think whatever best pleased him.

 

"I want you to help me talk to Gwyn, as well, when we get back." Lyarra pressed on, frowning. "I - we both know why my husband is so angry."

 

"Yes." Robb winced, then looked up. "You think  _ she _ knows who killed the Princess? Lyarra, she never talks about… almost anything before coming here."

 

"Yes, but she can't have just started listening to everything, all of the sudden, upon coming North." Lyarra replied, shaking her head. Then she relayed Gwyn's comment about having value, and what happens to those without it in courtly households. "I think she's just afraid. You know how she gets."

 

"If we could settle this, it would help the North and Father's reputation. The bannermen all understand that father was young at the time and desperate, but being manipulated into giving a dishonorable oath to protect a rapist and a murderer of babes makes him seem weak at the time." Robb agreed. "Not to mention that it would make things easier for you in Dorne."

 

"It's the right thing to do." Lyarra added and got total agreement just as Arya and Theon pelted into the clearing on their own horses, their guards following behind with a look of severe irritation.

 

* * *

 

"Prince Oberyn."

 

Ned Stark was both pleased and displeased to see that the man was alone when he entered the small solar attached to the guest quarters where Prince Oberyn was staying.

 

"Lord Stark." The taller man drawled before gesturing negligently around him. "Please, have a seat."

 

"Thank you." Ned sat, ignoring the untidy sprawl that seemed to be the man's answer to every situation other than the sparring yard.

 

"Tell me, to what do I owe the endless pleasure of this visit?"

 

Ned was actually getting used to the sarcasm. He wasn't sure whether that was a relief or another layer of annoyance. He accepted both as part of whatever punishment the Gods were intent on visiting upon his House.

 

"I wished to offer my apologies, and my reasons for remaining silent about Ser Arthur Dayne's death." Ned said baldly and watched the other man freeze.

 

He braced himself for some verbal strike that would follow. The Red Viper said nothing. Instead he looked at Ned with black, reptilian eyes and simply waited; coiled languidly in his chair and as unpredictable as his namesake.

 

"Lord Howland Reed is younger than I, and was then." Ned breathed out. "He's a brave and decent man, but he's a Crannogman. They are small men, and fight through their wits and by ambush."

 

"I had thought all north of the Red Mountains disdained ambush warfare." Oberyn drawled and Ned nodded, refusing to be anything but somber in the face of the man's infuriating, obstinate insolence.

 

"Aye. The Crannogmen are mocked even in the North." Ned agreed. "But Lord Howland has been my friend, and a good honorable man as long as I've known him. It was to save my life that he stabbed Ser Arthur in the back, just as it was to save his that I remained silent."

 

The Prince said nothing and Ned ran a hand over his beard before meeting those black eyes.

  
  


"We both know that I was Lord Paramount then, and the new King and conqueror's best friend." Ned replied. "House Dayne could rage in their grief, but they'd not lay a hand on me if I returned their family blade and acted with honor. If they'd known what my bannerman had done he'd never have walked out of Dorne alive. I am sorry your friend died as he did, so that mine might live."

 

"Apologies ceased to have meaning for me in matters of death and war long ago, Lord Stark. A lesson  _ I _ learned when Dorne judged  _ me _ the villain for killing Edgar Yronwood  _ despite _ the fact that the old letch was keeping his paramour against her will and had been for more than half a year by the time she crawled into my bed." The other man's tone was dark and low and without a hint of anything but harsh truth, and Ned looked at him in shock; he’d never heard any detail of that story beyond the probable use of a poisoned spear on the Red Viper’s part. "I judge men by their actions."

 

"Then recall what actions started the war in  _ truth _ , not in Robert's romantic heart." Ned shot back, his own temper worn down to nothing. "Lord Arryn called for his banners not when Lyanna vanished or my father and brother were killed, but when the Mad King lost his mind enough to start calling for my head and Robert's and anyone else's he fancied. War would have come no matter what, and it was Rhaegar's  _ idiotic _ refusal to put the man aside without assuring his prophecy that cost us all our kin and the realm its peace."

 

"You're holding the Silver Prince responsible for the war?" The surprise on the thinner man's face was clear, and Ned just glared at him.

 

"Aye." He all but spat, and then bit his tongue to keep from speaking further.

 

He hadn't intended to say so much. It came perilously close to discussing his sister, and he could afford to say nothing about Lyanna. He'd already argued with Benjen over it enough for one lifetime, and knew that his brother wasn't entirely wrong. Lyarra was potentially in grave danger should the truth come out in Dorne.

 

It was in strategy where Ned and Benjen differed. He knew it was wrong to keep the truth from Lyarra as a married woman. Ned had originally intended to tell her before she wed, but now he could only see the dangers of telling her. Lyarra was as useless at lying as he was, and her eyes gave everything she felt away, as had her mother's before her. He couldn't risk having her in King's Landing with the secret on her mind, not when his heart was less than sure of how well Robert would deal with seeing someone who so looked like Lyanna under his own roof.

 

Then there was the Viper to deal with. Ned had his own fears in regards to the man, but finding a kinslayer amongst the Martells was not one of them. As infuriated as he'd been to see that sheet flapping in the wind, it had been a great relief on one front.

 

Prince Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper of Dorne, feared all over the Seven Kingdoms and Essos for his volatile temper and deadly nature… loved children. Ned was neither blind nor stupid, and it had been obvious from the moment he'd descended into hilarity over Ned's youngest hurling a root vegetable at his own uncle, that the man was a father at heart. Oberyn had accepted Rickon's temper tantrums like a seasoned veteran accepted the vagaries of battle. He'd charmed and been charmed by Arya completely, in all of her wildness, and treated her like a daughter of his own. That was the largest reason why Ned had felt comfortable allowing Arya to join her favorite sister's household in Dorne.

 

It was also why Ned had decided to tell Lyarra the truth of her parentage, but only after she'd birthed her first child. Hopefully by then Robert would have gotten his crown and house in order. 

 

Either way, Ned would deal with the Martell's thirst for revenge against Robert when he could avoid it no longer. If Lyarra had carried and birthed one of the Viper's children, he wouldn't lay a hand on her. The protection that the Mark already gave her would be magnified a thousand fold. He just prayed she fared better in childbed than his sister…

 

"Well," Oberyn finally spoke, his tone cautious as he unknowingly jarred Ned from his own thoughts. "On that we can agree. Rhaegar was an irresponsible, dreaming fool."

 

"A failure as a Prince, a knight, and a husband." Ned agreed darkly and rubbed a hand over his face. "I know not what else to say."

 

"On the contrary, you know precisely what to say." The Viper's poisoned tongue came out again, and his sarcasm with it. "You simply hold the value of an oath unwillingly given too highly to say it."

 

Ned said nothing. There was nothing he could do or say. Robert had, knowingly and intently, tied his hands far too thoroughly for that. While he loved the King as well as any of his brothers, he couldn't help feeling a flare of resentment for being put in this position. Had he pressed Tywin, the Mountain and Lorch at least would have seen a headsman's axe to assure Robert of Lord Lannister's loyalty. Instead Robert had let them go free over the mangled bodies of innocent babes and an innocent woman's death and suffering.

 

"Yet why retread old paths?" The other man went on. "There are other trails to follow to the same end in Winterfell, aren't there?"

 

"You told my daughter that you don't hurt little girls in Dorne." Ned shot back, hearing the implications immediately and being angered by them. "I didn't take Lady Gwyn into my care, nor allow her into Lyarra's household to open her up to harassment. The child's suffered enough."

"Indeed? And how precisely has the little lioness suffered?"

 

"Does it matter if you're making it worse?" Ned stood up, done talking in circles. "The Lady Gwyn spent two years in Casterly Rock, and came out of it a shaking, frightened shell of a child. You swore a knightly vow to protect the innocent and guard women. Does a drop of blood from a family that harms its own disqualify her?"

 

That, Ned saw with satisfaction, struck a nerve.

 

"As part of the Princess' household, the Lady shall have mine own protection." The other man stood as well, visibly angry once more.  _ This _ time, however, Ned had the satisfaction of knowing that he’d been who’d hit the mark too closely for the Viper’s comfort. "She need not fear  _ anything _ , least of all a sense of justice. Though, being of the Westerlands, I suppose it makes sense to fear what is new to you. I imagine Lady Gwyn will take some time before she comes to understand of my household and realize she’s in no danger."

 

"You may find that you and Lady Gwyn have more in common than you know, Your Grace." Ned bit back and immediately wished he'd stayed silent.

 

The bitterness in his own voice was enough to ring across the room. It sent a ripple of surprise over the Dornishman's face. Then the Prince leaned forward, his black eyes avid and his body as tense as any serpent before the strike.

 

"Is that so?"

 

"I bid you good day, Your Grace, and hope to see you and my daughter at dinner in the Great Hall."

 

Ned left the room then, before he could be baited into saying anything else he didn't wish to.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra all but walked into her husband's chest as he opened the door to the guest rooms they now shared. She took a moment to look up at him in surprise. Oberyn, in turn, looked down at her in much the same before his lips twitched upwards into a smile.

 

"I had thought we might sup alone tonight, Husband?"

 

"I think the proper word might be  _ 'assumed' _ rather than  _ 'thought' _ , Wife." His tone was merry rather than offended. "Your father will be disappointed."

 

"Uncle Benjen has him cornered in his solar, so I don't think he will have a chance to miss me in the Hall." Lyarra's lips quirked up as she turned to the side to let him take the leather bag hanging from her neck. It was meant to be hanging from her shoulder, but her hands were full.

It clinked when he lifted it, and Oberyn's face opened up into a wider smile. Lyarra was grateful for it, especially when he hummed his approval upon further inspecting the contents. She watched as he took the two glass bottles of Dornish wine out with obvious appreciation.

"Lord Robb would have you know that he's less than pleased with the hanging of the bridal sheets and would like to  _ discuss _ it with you over tourney swords tomorrow morning, but other than that, my brother sends his greetings."

 

"If he sends his greetings in the form of decent wine, I will accept them happily and be obligingly gentle with him upon the field tomorrow." Her husband went in search of a corkscrew as she carried the basket in front of the hearth.

 

There was already a large bear skin rug stretched out there. Lyarra had no intention of eating directly on a fur rug, however. Instead she spread out a tightly woven, plain brown blanket atop the rug. Then she removed the toweling from the basket and began to spread out their meal.

 

"You don't prefer the table, do you?"

 

"As it is spread with my latest attempts at poetic expression, the floor would be my first choice as well." The Prince chuckled and returned with an opened bottle, the other setting in the windowsill where it could chill further. "Other than my irresistible nature and natural charm, to what do I owe the pleasure of this intimate feast?"

 

"I wished to talk, and if Lady Jynessa quizzes me over House banners or Dornish history one more time I may lose my mind.  _ Especially _ if I'm trying to eat when she asks me to justify my belief in one of the fifteen accepted and entirely conflicting theories about how the Ullers managed to kill a dragon." Lyarra winced and her husband outright laughed.

 

"As good a reason as any for a private supper. Especially if Ser Ulwyck gets wind of it." Oberyn was still chuckling as he lowered himself gracefully down onto the blanket to sit opposite her. "He'll argue with you on the subject no matter what version you choose.  _ Then _ he'll claim superior knowledge as a member of House Uller, but refuse to clarify or support any one account on its own merit."

 

Lyarra laughed at that summary of Ser Ulwyck's likely behavior. She was growing fond of the man, but the knight was a contrary man at times. Sometimes she thought that he got on so well with Prince Oberyn simply because they both were of such changeful disposition.

 

"How was your morning ride?" Her husband asked as he hummed appreciatively at the food.

 

Lyarra had secured her meal before approaching Gwyn with Robb. She hadn't wanted her friend to feel hunted, so she'd let her know that the talk was coming. Then she'd assembled the basket with Gwyn, talking of other things, while they stood at a work table in one corner of the bustling kitchen.

 

She'd secured a large crockery that Gwyn had set aside that morning to slow-cook in the coals. The venison roast had been rubbed and marinated in spices and sugar beet molasses. It sat on a bed of quartered baby potatoes, carrots, and other root vegetables. A smaller crock contained greens steamed with butter. A small loaf of fresh, dark bread and a variety of cheeses finished out the meal, along with a couple of fresh apples for desert.

 

"It was good. I've missed spending time with Robb." Lyarra said and felt her heart clench around the idea of how much more she would miss him soon.

 

Her husband said nothing, but the way he scowled down at the knife as he made quick work of dissecting the roast said he must have felt something of it. She wondered if he was thinking of Robb’s words, comparing how Oberyn was taking Lyarra away to how Prince Rhaegar took Princess Elia away from her family all those years before. Lyarra was ever getting flashes of her husband's changeful emotions. They unnerved her sometimes, and she couldn't help but wonder if he experienced the same. She knew that's how Marks were meant to work, but she also knew that soulmates never experienced anything in precisely the same way.

 

"Tell me more of your lessons."

 

Oberyn changed the subject and Lyarra let him. They discussed politics and history. Lyarra learned a little more about what responsibilities would be expected of her in Sunspear and found herself more than slightly nervous. The Old Keep was usually where the Prince of Dorne held court, though Oberyn's older brother had lately moved to the Water Gardens for his health. That had, in turn, left Oberyn to manage the court at Sunspear, and as his wife she would be expected to be his chatelaine.

 

Lyarra promised herself to not just study during her lessons, but to begin asking more questions. She was determined not to embarrass herself. She would let no-one in Dorne say anything of her having been born a bastard, or of the North breeding ill-educated barbarians.

 

"I spoke to Gwyn again."

 

Lyarra had to get a second glass of wine into herself to prepare for this particular talk. She knew what she had to say wouldn't please her husband. She also knew that she wasn't pleased either, but she'd come to a decision. One, she knew, that might put her on the wrong side of the man's infamous temper for the first time. She wasn’t going to be afraid, however, and she would not back down.

 

"Indeed."

 

She had his attention absolutely now, those black eyes focused on her tightly. She could feel the writhing mass of loathing and pain that underscored so much of what he felt and felt wriggling in the air between them, almost. His hate was so old and cultivated that it was practically a living thing of its own at this point, but it was the grief underneath it that Lyarra wished she couldn't feel. It made her think of leaving Robb and her other siblings with fear. It was one thing to leave them, but what if something happened? She wouldn't be there for them…

 

"Robb helped and we got her to say a little more." Lyarra bit her lip as she saw his eyes briefly light up and then immediately dim in anger.

 

"But  _ not _ about what I would wish to hear, yes?" He asked bitterly and Lyarra shook her head.

 

"She's - I never realized how tangled up Gwyn is." Lyarra said, her tone sad. "I know you don't want to hear about her, or sympathize, and I don't blame you. She's my friend, however, and-"

 

"She is a little girl, and she is afraid." Oberyn interrupted her, his voice not precisely calm or happy, but his tone reasonable overtop the frustration. "I am a father, and I understand frightened children. If it is something else, make me understand."

 

"Robb and I got her to talk a little about Casterly Rock." Lyarra confessed. "Very little, but it's clear she's  _ terrified _ of the Lannisters. She hates that we're going to King's Landing, and I believe if you snubbed the King and my Father and rushed me off to White Harbor bound for Sunspear tomorrow, she would actually like you better."

 

"Alas, my brother bids me otherwise, so that is not an option." Oberyn snorted, frowning. "The child truly believes the lions to be that dangerous? They are powerful, but they are mortal, Lyarra."

 

"I know that, but - well, she…" Lyarra tried to think of how to make it make sense as she looked down into her half-empty wine glass. "When Gwyn's scared, she stops talking, Oberyn. I always thought that was a choice, but today we really tried to get her to talk and she… I don't have a word for it. She tried to speak, but nothing seemed to come out, and she had another one of her shaking fits."

 

"I've seen the shaking fits." Her husband admitted reluctantly. "Sometimes they are temporary. They may strike soldiers after a bad battle, and never be seen again or stay for years and return at the worst possible moment."

 

"Gwyn has them when she's frightened; sometimes they're not serious. This time Robb and I had to put her to bed afterward." Lyarra winced. "It's why I was not here sooner."

 

"And why you did not show up at all to this afternoon’s lessons with Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria."

 

"Aye, that too. I hope they are not too angry." Lyarra rubbed her face, and looked up at him earnestly. "I did get out of her that it's more than just being afraid of you sending her away when you have no more use for her. You know that, during the first year of being wed and Marked… we're, well, our connection can be dangerous?"

 

"Yes, the first year or two, the Gods hold our lives as one to prevent families from interfering with their will through assassination." Oberyn stated impatiently. "What has that to do with it?"

 

"She won't tell us what she knows, but she made it clear that she's afraid you'll end up dead and take me with you."

 

She wasn't surprised when he stood from the floor in a single swift motion and his own wineglass ended up in the fireplace. The waste of glasswork was irritating and the explosion of bright orange flames and the crackle of glassware made her jump. She wasn't unduly alarmed, however. His anger was an expanding cloud moving in all directions, but it wasn't really directed at her.

 

"That is idiotic!" He snarled. "Five and ten years, nearly, I have waited for my sister's justice, and you're telling me that it could be easily at hand and that child denies it because she's afraid I'll end up dead? What does a maid of three-and-ten know of such things?"

 

"Robb and I couldn't figure out if she's afraid of someone specific." Lyarra went on, standing as well. "It could be that she's afraid of who she would name, or is just terrified of Lord Twyin and his power in general. It could be that she's too terrified to be rational."

 

" _ Why _ ?" Oberyn snarled the most damning question and Lyarra bared her teeth back at him in her own frustration.

 

"I don't know!" Lyarra threw up her hands and glared back. "Gwyn does _not_ talk about her past. I've said it to you before! I know her father was second-in-command of the Lannisport Guard. I know her mother was the third daughter of a Lannisport Lannister who made a moderate fortune in the wool trade. I know her father owned two whorehouses. Only today I found out _his_ father was the disinherited nephew of Lord Parren who worked in a mine before becoming a sellsword! I do not know anything about her life at the Rock other than she was a _shaking_ _wreck_ who jumped at shadows when she came here two years before!"

 

Oberyn slowly ceased his pacing. First he snarled a bit. Then he picked up the second bottle of sour Dornish red and opened it, drinking directly from the bottle. Finally he settled on the cushions he'd spread about the floor for them again. This time the sprawl was more aggressive than it was lazy.

 

Lyarra sat down next to him at his gesture. Slowly she let herself relax as she felt his anger recede. She couldn't tell what replaced it, but as she watched the shadows and lights of the fire play over his sharp features and dance, reflected in his black eyes, she assumed it was thought. He didn't relax when she moved over closer to him, but he did hook an arm around her waist to show she was welcome. Lyarra was surprised how much that pleased her.

 

"Ser Damien heard a rumor." Her husband turned unhappily, measuring eyes towards her. "Lady Stark's Septa was overheard four days ago telling Lord Forester's daughter that Lady Gwyn had been ruined as a girl in the Westerlands, and his pity for her was why Lord Stark was willing to foster your friend."

 

Lyarra glared at him as her temper flared.

 

"That is nothing more than an ugly rumor Septa Mordane started out of her need to appear wise!" She spat, reaching out to begin returning the remains of their meal to the basket to give her something to do. "Gwyn  _ swears _ that isn't what happened."

 

"But she won't tell you what  _ did _ happen to make her so frightened."

 

"Until today, she wouldn't admit anything happened at all! She'd just say that Winterfell isn't like the rest of Westeros and we should be glad to live in the North." Lyarra let out a deep breath. "I learned more from Gwyn today than in the last two years, and all she really told me was that she's afraid you'll get us both killed, she's afraid of Lord Twyin the way small children fear snarks and grumpkins from beyond the Wall, and that she claims Lord Twyin lets some of his men do whatever they want amongst the smallfolk with no consequences. After that she was shaking so hard she couldn't speak."

 

Her husband let out a series of soft curses in a language Lyarra didn't know. She braced herself, but his temper remained focused firmly away from her. He didn't even get up again, just sat up straighter and balanced his elbows loosely on his knees as he stared into the fire.

 

"I'm not going to torture her further." Lyarra said quietly. "You're my husband, but she is my dearest friend."

 

"I would not have you torment the girl." Oberyn's voice was stiff, and she could feel some inner struggle going on. "Leave her be, for now."

 

Lyarra took that as the best answer she would get and rubbed a hand over her face. She was startled by a knock at their chamber door. A moment later Oberyn called out and the guard looked within to announce that her Uncle Benjen wanted words with the Prince. Lyarra decided she'd had quite enough and rose to her feet before Oberyn could to shove past the guard. Her uncle looked at her in mild surprise.

 

"Uncle."

 

"Lyarra." Benjen offered her a smile.

 

"I'm going to assume that, as your the latest in the line of male Starks to arrive to threaten my husband, you've brought your sword with you?"

 

"Yes?" Now he looked amused, his lips turning slightly as he shot a mild glare over Lyarra's head towards where her husband had walked up behind her. "Shall I need it?"

 

" _ Yes _ ." Lyarra said firmly, feeling Oberyn stiffen in surprise behind her.

 

Instead of saying anything, however, as he tried to rest a hand on his shoulder she shrugged it off. Then she reached past him to one of several wooden hooks set into the wall. Hanging beside a far more well-used, if well-cared for, blade was a smaller, slender sword. Brand new and gleaming in a black leather scabbard with the glint of amber in the center of the hilt's crossguard, Oberyn's wedding gift to her had made her giddy with surprise. Uncle Benjen's shock wasn't bad, either.

 

"With the mood I'm in, a tourney sword isn't going to suffice." Lyrra smiled sweetly at her uncle, stepped out, and aggressively wounding her arm through his, before the black-clad man could do anything about it. "Let's go. I need a match."

 

Lyarra ignored her husband's soft laughter as he grabbed his own cloak and weaponry and followed them. She didn't tell him to leave them be, however, or protest when Ser Arron joined the group. She'd had entirely enough of the politics of being a Princess for one day. For the moment she was just going to be a wolf.

 

* * *

 

Jon Arryn looked around the private audience chamber of the Tower of the Hand with a practiced, if tired, eye. Bread, cheese, and cold meats were set out along with a good assortment of fruit on the sideboard. A variety of wine rested in crystal decanters that were finely made, but not fiddly. He'd had a small table placed in front of the fireplace along with two comfortable armchairs. The carpets were Myrish, the candles burned well in the sconces, and everything appeared comfortable, casual, and intimate without being forced.

 

It was  _ amazing _ , the effort that went into looking as if no effort were put forward at all. His guest was announced and the Hand of the King welcomed Lord Tywin Lannister inside with the appropriate level of limited formality. The King's Hand couldn't been seen to imply that he didn't trust the King's goodfather, after all.

 

"Lord Tywin Lannister to see you, Lord Arryn."

 

His guard's announcement threw him from his own thoughts and Jon called for his guest to be let in as he stood to receive him. It was gratifying to watch as the door was opened and the Lion Lord shown in. Tywin Lannister no longer seemed quite so invincible, though only a fool would presume it so.

 

The tall man was now rail thin, where once he'd been lean muscle. Walking up the stairs to the reception room had left Lord Tywin working to hide that he was out of breath. The thick sideburns were trimmed close to hide how brittle and sparse the hair had become when Grey Plague had wracked his body. That he'd survived at all at his age was viewed as a surprising accomplishment.

 

In another case, Jon might have called it a miracle but he doubted the Gods would provide Tywin Lannister with such. Hopefully the Stranger was preserving him for a more just end.

 

"Lord Lannister, thank you for coming." Jon greeted the man with an appropriately respectful nod and got one in return. "Please, have a seat."

 

"Thank you." The younger man sat. "Your summons indicated you wished to discuss a matter of some importance this afternoon?"

 

Jon had spent the morning dealing with the grief of Robert's latest bastard. In this case, the girl hadn't wanted to keep the child. She'd been a young servant and her mother had died in childbed recently. She'd asked for moon tea, and if some position couldn't be found in another keep far away from the Queen's temper.

 

Jon had sent her to Dragonstone after having a Maester see to her. At the moment Dragonstone had no lord for the pretty young girl to seduce, and the steward Stannis Baratheon had trained there would tolerate no nonsense. After that a letter from his more responsible foster-son should have been a relief full of family news from Winterfell, and discussing Jon's increased attempts to get the warrior and lord he would always think of as an earnest lad to come to King's Landing and make a visible show of the North's support for the Crown.

 

"Yes." Jon sat down as well, grateful for the support of the well-padded armchair. His arthritis was getting worse. "I had a raven recently, from Lord Stark."

 

"Good news, I hope?"

 

If nothing else was particularly pleasurable about it, Jon reflected, the lack of small talk found when dealing with Lord Tywin was always something of a relief. Even a request for  _ 'good news'  _ was just a polite way to get information.

 

"Very. It appears that Grand Maester Pycelle's friends in Old Town were not nearly so accurate as he claimed. Lady Lyarra Stark's soulmate is  _ not _ to be a minor Martell cousin. Prince Oberyn is finally to wed at the Gods' insistence."

 

The briefest flicker of surprise passed the man's face, and then the mask settled in. Jon wondered if he could somehow parlay this into proof that the Grand Maester was in the man's pay. He doubted it.

 

"A most  _ fortunate _ event for the North. Lord Stark is truly blessed. I know of no other man who could have been saddled with a bastard and end up with his daughter a Princess."

 

"My father always said that the Gods favor the honorable and just." Jon sipped his wine.

 

"If so, they do Lord Stark's daughter no favors in her husband." Lord Tywin reflected. "The man is not called the Red Viper for nothing. Dangerous and ill-tempered; I wonder that a man like Lord Stark isn't concerned for his child."

 

"I'm sure Ned is. However, concern for his child will not outweigh his duty to his Gods. In the North they hold that the Old Gods use Marks to prevent strife between families by settling debts. Ned views this as punishment for not saving the Princess Elia's life."

 

"I see." The immobile face remained so.

 

"There is, of course, a silver lining." Jon went on. "The bride price custom of Dorne is such that Ned is likely to get an influx of either currency or goods to bolster the North's economy."

 

"Given the North's habits and traditions, I imagine he will request goods." Lord Tywin sipped his own wine, but didn't touch the food. Neither did Jon. He'd have to have it distributed to the servants, as it would be wrong to waste it. "Dorne has had a spectacular year for farming."

 

"Yes, and Ned's letter indicated that he plans to negotiate further for his bannermen to secure a larger surplus through trade." Jon couldn't quite keep the hint of exasperation from his voice when he added, "Winter is Coming."

 

Lord Tywin condescended to raise his eyebrows in silent comment. Jon didn't want to discount the trials of winter in the North, as he'd never lived through a Northern Winter. He  _ did _ , however, sometimes find that the rabid preparations that the North went through for the season exasperating politically.

 

"If that is the case, then Dorne will not see any economic fallout from their massive food surplus."

 

"No," Jon agreed, "Nor will food prices drop between the Red Mountains and the Neck."

 

The Westerlands would, without a doubt, be hardest hit by that. Lord Tywin's lands had poor soil, and you couldn't eat gold. Just as the prices of everything had risen due to inflation, the massive death toll amongst miners in the Westerlands made it harder to mint gold and silver. Now the cost of food would rise and create further unrest for the Warden of the West to deal with.

 

The Reach hadn't had the spectacular crop yield it might have this year or last due to the sheer number of smallfolk killed by the plague. Oh, its crop yield was good, but the Tyrells and their vassals would sell little. Jon knew that Lord Tywin had begun maneuvering in that direction, but was meeting the usual very polite resistance that House Tyrell was capable of.

 

The Maesters had been rattled by their inability to treat the Grey Plague and the hostility that caused among the smallfolk. Just as the Faith was reeling from the hostile response to their insistence that the Plague was the result of sin, and their loss of face when the Old Gods provided a cure, the Maesters were scrambling to secure their place.

 

They had begun to do so by sending ravens carrying the formula, calculations, and predictions for the coming winter to all of the major keeps. They could say with no certainty, of course, but they believed that autumn would arrive shortly, and be brief. The winter after that was predicted to be at least twice the length of average, and the idea of a ten year long winter was  _ grave _ . The smallfolk were restless enough in half of the kingdoms.

 

"There has never been any great link or trade between Dorne and the North, and there is much reason for hostility." Lord Tywin went on and sat forward as the real discussion began; Winter was yet a fear that could be put off. "The Red Viper is not about to forget his grievances. How  _ concerned _ for his child will the Warden of the North be, Lord Arryn?"

 

"I all but raised Eddard Stark. I couldn't love him or know him better if he were the son of my body." Jon sighed, reaching up to run a hand through the thick white curls that still topped his head. "His honor is  _ unquestionable _ , his loyalty to Robert couldn't be greater if the King was his own brother, and Ned values  _ nothing _ more than family."

 

"Should the Viper be mad enough to risk the Gods' anger over something happening to his Marked bride," Tywin's voice suggested he thought Oberyn quite that mad. "The girl's safety could be a strong motivation for the North to act."

 

"I sincerely doubt that either of the Martell Princes would put a young woman, especially Prince Oberyn's soulmate, to any harm."

 

"We both know that there are ways to achieve harmful ends without taking the burden of the dishonor on your own hands."

 

Jon couldn't restrain himself from scowling at that. Tywin clearly won the round. How could Jon not still be angry over the deaths of the Princess and her children? They'd been unnecessary, and they'd put all of them in an untenable situation that the whole of Westeros was suffering from.

 

Jon had put Robert on the throne because he had no choice. He'd known that Robert would always be lusty and irresponsible. It was in the boy's nature, just as was his profligate generosity and kindness. There was honor and goodness beneath House Baratheon's rage, and Robert was a gleaming example of how all of it could both go very wrong and very right.

 

He would have been, Jon thought with grief, as good a Lord Paramount as anyone could want. He was loyal, and spared the misery of his current marriage his bad habits would never have become so bad. Saddled with a crown he was ill-suited to wear and a wife he loathed, Robert was slowly coming to ruin and Jon grieved that he could do nothing about it.

 

Had those children lived with their mother Jon could have appointed himself Lord Protector. Doran Martell, a reasonable man, could have been appointed to the Small Council to assure his family's interests. Then Prince Oberyn, who was greatly beloved in his homeland for the very things that the rest of Westeros distrusted him for, could have served as his brother's voice in Sunspear while all Seven Kingdoms were stabilized under decent leadership. Everyone would have watched young King Aegon like a hawk for signs of madness of course. Should he have exhibited them, then more steps could have been taken. For one, a wife who wasn't the lad's sister…

 

"So there are." Jon acknowledged and shook off the might-have-beens as useless. "Should the Martells wish to use Lady Lyarra as a hostage they need only move her into a position of danger. At that point, Ned would be forced to choose."

 

"Do you doubt his choice?"

 

"I could never doubt Ned's love or support for Robert."

 

Lord Tywin's eyes were sharp and Jon went on to drive the point further home.

 

"Ned applies himself to his duties and his honor like some men apply themselves to wine and women. He loves them dearly, and he loves justice and goodness in others too much to abandon it himself. A  _ just _ and  _ good _ king need fear nothing from the North."

 

Lord Tywin's lone surviving royal grandson and the Heir to the Crown tortured animals for fun. He often set his hounds on small, injured, and defenseless creatures - such as fawns - to watch the more powerful animal triumph. He also sobbed like a baby and threw massive tantrums during the lessons where he was supposed to be learning the arts of war because he wasn't allowed to win every time. He had neither the patience nor the humility to apply himself to his Maester's lessons and was ill-educated and foolish in his arrogance. Joffrey Baratheon was no-one's idea of a man who would grow into a just and good king.

 

"A relief to us all, I am sure." Lord Tywin's understanding was, as usual, perfect. "It is a great pity that the Crown and Dorne have been stripped of their daughters. It is long past time for Dorne to have a closer relationship with the realm."

 

Neither man mentioned the general over sufficiency of sons amidst the Great Houses. Jon Arryn felt he did nothing but fret about how soon he could shore Robert's position up enough to return to the Vale and sort out the succession amidst his distant cousins by appointing a successor to the Arryn name. Likewise Lord Tywin would not wish to be reminded that the only son left to inherit Casterly Rock was a dwarf that he hated.

 

"My thoughts precisely when I wrote to Prince Doran and bid his brother welcome in King's Landing." Jon agreed. "The King wishes to celebrate his foster-brother's good fortune in having a daughter destined by the Gods for a Princess, and it would be an excellent opportunity for negotiation."

 

"It strikes me that Lord Stark has two daughters yet unmarried." Lord Tywin offered what they both knew was coming and Jon nodded.

 

"If a balance cannot be struck with Dorne, then a secondary match to bring all three regions together has a great deal of potential. I understand that his next eldest daughter is approaching two-and-ten, and is very fair in the way of her mother."

 

"I shall speak to my daughter and grandson on the matter then." Lord Tywin agreed. "You shall write to Lord Stark, of course, and speak to the King."

 

"I shall."

 

The idea of marrying a truly innocent girl to Joffrey wasn't pleasant, but Jon believed that the lad could be constrained if they got him away from the Queen somewhat. There was still time for that, and Lord Tywin had already proven would choose a grandson on the throne over his daughter's happiness. The important thing was stability within the realm and not giving the Martells the room they felt they needed to truly maneuver into war.

 

They were the least populous kingdom, and they didn't use heavy warfare tactics. The eldest Martell had proven himself wise enough not to engage in open warfare  _ once _ , so what they needed was to maintain a balance where the Prince of Dorne believed it wasn't worth it to directly oppose the Crown. Should they counterbalance the hostage situation of Lyarra Stark with her younger sister, it wouldn't give the Dornish any free rope with which to convince Ned to hang himself.

 

Jon Arryn bid Lord Tywin goodbye and called a servant to pick up the remains of the untouched meal. Then he went into his solar. Looking at the two massive trestle tables piled high with neat ledgers he spent a moment to deeply mourn Petyr Baelish's death. Not only had his final illness brought about feverish ramblings that had severely embarrassed Lord Tully and Jon himself by revealing Lysa's past indiscretions, but the man's financial dealings were so  _ convoluted _ that no-one else could make sense of them.

 

He'd had nearly a year to look over the Crown's finances, and he'd had many other sets of eyes turn to them as well. In all that time he hadn't been able to make heads or tales of any of it, beyond realizing with no small amount of embarrassment that the largest influx of coin that Baelish had brought in had come from having the Crown invest in brothels. It had worked out well enough in the short term, but when Jon divested the Crown of those embarrassing assets he'd just cost them yet more money.

 

The smallfolk were discontented. There was a labor shortage in all of Westeros. Half the mines in the Westerlands had shut down because of that labor shortage. The North was allying with Dorne and the Prince in Sunspear was being raised to the status of sainthood by the peasantry. Meanwhile, amidst all of this, the Faith was floundering as a resurgence of belief in the Old Gods flourished, and its attempts to suppress this were leading to more unrest.

 

"What better time for a wedding?" Jon muttered in tired sarcasm to an empty room and got a sheet of paper to prepare another letter to Ned, encouraging him to bring his second born daughter with him and reminding him of how dearly Robert and Jon himself had missed Ned since the Greyjoy Rebellion.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparations for the Roadtrip South to KL. (Posting tonight because I'll be busy Monday morning.)

**Chapter Ten – 297 A.C.**

 

Leaving Winterfell was a bitter experience. Lyarra was slowly growing to hope that she might one day find the kind of affection for her husband that her father had found in Lady Catelyn, but that didn't change the fact that she'd never wanted to leave the home she couldn't quite claim. Saying goodbye to everything she'd ever known hurt.

 

There were some things that weren't all carefully restrained tears. Some of those things were even entertaining. Lyarra would always remember the day that she realized she was going to have to assemble all of her possessions and then decide what to take with her to Dorne with fondness. Her father was riding out with Prince Oberyn and several of his party to view some of the seasoned lumber that would be part of the dowry, and so Lyarra was left in an interesting sort of mixed company for the exercise.

 

"Everything within this room is the sum of your possessions?" Lady Jynessa frowned as she looked over the modest room's interior.

 

"No, I share the room with Gwyn." Lyarra willed herself not to blush at the lady's surprise at her lifestyle and the visible reminder that she'd been no more than a bastard daughter. "Well, shared."

 

It felt like an invasion of her privacy to bring the Dornishwoman with her into the room. Lady Jynessa was well over fifty, though she looked younger, and having the impressive and accomplished Lady look over the private spaces and details of her life was intimidating. Having Lady Stark stand there as well with a stern and uncomfortable expression on her face did  _ not _ make it easier. At least Lady Myria had gone out with her father's party and wouldn't be there to add to the discomfort.

 

"I see." Lady Jynessa replied, and then smiled at Lyarra with the quiet support she'd slowly begun to offer her at odd moments in between fast-paced instruction and keen assessment. "Well, then, the first thing we should do is separate everything out."

 

"All of my clothes are in the chest, here." Lyarra stepped forward and nodded towards one of the waiting maids. "You may take this to Prince Oberyn's quarters."

 

The two stout maids hurried forward to take possession of the chest. Then Lyarra realized things were about to get more complex. Unsurprisingly, it was Gwyn who slipped into the room unseen, smoothing her hands over the dark green tweed dress she was wearing and picking up where Lyarra had left off.

 

"Lyarra has two more carved chests that she finished recently." Gwyn offered to the room at large before turning to Lyarra. "You could use them for the rest of your trousseau."

 

Lyarra was about to protest that she'd put too much work into the carvings on those chests to keep them. She'd intended to sell both in Wintertown. Now, however, she realized that she wouldn't have  _ need _ to do that, and it would potentially embarrass her father to imply she didn't have a sufficient allowance to support herself. Not that she did, Lyarra had just never turned down a chance to put a little silver aside for later.

 

"You're right." Lyarra agreed and walked over to where she'd laid a sheet of paint-stained canvas over both chests to form a small table in one corner of the room.

 

She and Gwyn had been using the space as a kind of de-facto desk. The night before it had been spread with brand new, fresh smelling parchment and an untouched ledger she'd gotten from her father. Oberyn had gone over the figures from the wedding contract with her, and it had left her more than a little dizzy to realize the full financial reality behind going from the Bastard of Winterfell to a Martell Princess.

 

The half of her bride price that remained in her name wasn't going to be delivered to her in the form of agricultural produce as was now being readied to come North in staggered shipments. Instead, Oberyn had explained that the bride price would be paid in yearly installments in the form of  _ interest _ on the sum settled upon her by the Martells. A yearly sum that Lyarra had realized with shock would have been enough to maintain the kind of ten or twelve person household she had once expected to be in charge of as the wife of a minor noble.

 

Lady Jynessa had addressed the same thing in her lessons, though in a more roundabout way. She'd emphasized the fact that certain things were more expensive in Dorne, and certain things were cheaper to give Lyarra an idea of what she would be facing. Instead of outright helping Lyarra order her household, as Oberyn had offered to do and Lyarra's pride rebelled against, she'd given Lyarra all of the prices of labor, supplies and food. Then Lady Jynessa had delicately discussed the expectations that Lyarra faced for the kind of personal household she'd be expected to field as a separate entity within Oberyn's own household.

 

That had led to Lyarra sitting up all night with Gwyn, the ledger, and her notes from her lessons. Lyarra carefully took stock of the allowance that Oberyn would be giving her as his wife and added it to the income from the bride price. She was relieved to find that as his wife she also had the income from a well in the Prince's Pass that was traditionally a lifetime holding of the wife of any of House Martell's second sons. She couldn't pass it on to any children she had, but she would have that income for her entire life. Added together and with frugal management, Gwyn and Lyarra discovered that she could maintain her household with a modest excess of funds left over.

 

Lyarra was keen to reinvest that. Gwyn had pointed out with her usual brutal practicality that Oberyn was twenty-five years her senior, had a reputation for getting himself into various kinds of violent grief, and had eight bastard daughters to support. Lyarra wasn't sure what she thought about the blunt assessment that she would outlive her husband. She was sure that she didn't want to be any burden upon the daughters he already had and loved. The Marks on their wrists and the vows they'd said to each other should have no influence on his support of or eventual death settlements upon the Sand Snakes.

 

" _ Oh _ , how lovely!" Lady Jynessa's surprise lifted the careful, diplomatic tone of the stately woman's voice when Lyarra lifted the covering from the two chests.

 

The ledgers and paper had been relocated to the smaller chest where Lyarra had her private documents locked away for the journey. After she and Gwyn had done all of the math, Lyarra had taken it to her father. Lord Stark had been solemn and his eyes sad as he looked over everything and praised her planning and careful arrangement of her future finances. Then he'd personally gifted the small ironwood chest with its complicated locking mechanism to her.

 

It was already sitting in the rooms she shared in the Guest House with her new husband. It was still an awkward arrangement. Lyarra was left feeling guilty for her relief at how little time she and Oberyn spent together awake. He was yet occupied with meetings with her father, arranging for their journey to King's Landing, and then for returning to Dorne beyond that. She was spending every spare moment she could with the family she would be forced to leave behind.

 

The trunks revealed by the removal of the canvas were sturdy things of ironwood with steel bindings and locks she'd traded other carvings for. Their lids were arched, and smooth. All along the sides she'd carved the twisting, interlocking lines of old Northern knotwork.

 

"Princess, is all of this your handiwork?" Lady Jynessa went on, moving from the doorway and into the room at Lyarra's nod to look at the work tables currently scattered with Lyarra's various carvings.

 

"Aye." Lyarra felt even more embarrassed.

 

All of her projects were finished, but she'd only created one new thing of any merit or difficulty since her Mark came through. That particular object had been her smallest project to date. That had also been what it made it of note; a carving that small, that had to be strong enough to survive all kinds of manhandling while still being beautiful, took a great deal of skill. Formulating the two resins required for it had been a nightmare. Once the first resin had soaked into the wood, and the second been polished in layers atop it, she was confident that the unique qualities of weirwood branch she'd used and the protection she'd soaked it in had left the bone-white wood harder than iron.

 

"You are very talented, my dear." Lady Jynessa's voice was full of approval as she looked with a small, delighted smile upon a cedar carving of a fox kit curled in upon itself for warmth, peeking out from beneath its own bushy tail. Then she looked over at the portrait Lyarra had painted of herself, her father, and the rest of the Stark children. "I've known professionals who don't have your gifts."

 

"You're too kind. "Lyarra found herself saying, and was rewarded by Lady Jynessa's surprised pleasure, and another realization. "If the carving pleases you so much, please consider it a gift."

 

There was no way it was reasonable to take any of her hoarded work with her. Moreover, why should she rush and sell her carvings for a lower price in Wintertown when she was leaving? If she was leaving her family behind, well, shouldn't she leave something with them and with all of the others in Winterfell who'd been a part of her life?

 

That realization had led to one of the better memories associated with losing Winterfell as her home. As she went through her possessions and folded them up and put them away, Lyarra realized quickly that Lady Jynessa had brought more with her to act as the matron of the Dornish party than Lyarra owned.

 

This made sense in some ways. Lady Jynessa was an established woman, and the Head of House Blackmont. On the other hand, Lyarra wasn't merely packing for a trip. She finally began to see what Lady Stark was fretting about in regards to her trousseau. What she'd already put together in anticipation for her wedding wasn't but a fraction of what a trueborn daughter of a Lord Paramount was expected to bring with her.

 

Lyarra was a little disheartened to realize that the feverish work to augment it had not accomplished what they sought. Even having been told by her husband not to overspend or overwork herself in terms of clothing that would be unwearable in the Dornish heat, Lyarra could now see that the clothing, bedding, and other things she would bring with her into marriage were not up to the standards of the dowry she'd been given.

 

It was an embarrassing realization, but what was she to do? Lady Catelyn and even her father had thought that she was more likely to find a soulmate amongst a distant cousin of the Martell line. Had that been the case her trousseau would have been adequate, but there'd been no time to order Myrish lace, exotic ribbons, or other such things from the South. Even in White Harbor the selection was limited, though Lady Stark had sent for silk from the port once the Mark had come through.

 

It couldn't diminish the pleasure of handing out so many gifts. Lyarra liberally gifted the bowls and spoons amongst the older and kinder servants who'd never disdained her bastard status. Old Nan received several small figurines she could see with her gnarled old fingers rather than her failing eyes. Her father and siblings received the most. Lyarra advised them all to gift or sell the extras, as she ended up crowding their mantels with various carvings, but she had feeling that at least Robb was going to hoard them and brood about her absence.

 

Lyarra knew she was going to be absolutely heartbroken when she couldn't see her almost-twin every day. Oberyn had gifted her several pieces of jewelry upon their marriage, and she'd added them to her meager, mostly empty, jewelry box with some embarrassment. Not because she'd never been one for frivolity and her father gifted her the practical things she preferred as presented. Instead it had been the result of Oberyn poking through all of her things as soon as they entered his purview and obviously taking it as some kind of personal insult.

 

"It has nothing to do with you, you can see that, I hope?" Lyarra had sighed, twisting her heavy new wedding ring upon her finger and feeling oddly reassured by the weight.

 

"I know nothing of the sort."

 

He spoke as he looked down into her jewelry box. He frowned as he examined several thick bracelets of beautifully burled wood she had made for herself years before. They no longer fit, but Lyarra knew Sansa wouldn't wear wooden jewelry and Arya wouldn't wear jewelry of any sort so she'd taken them with her. He poked a finger inside to shift the tiered necklace of amber beads he'd given her, the chain circlet she'd worn to their wedding, and moved aside the rather impressive collection of beaten gold bangles that Prince Doran had sent as a gift.

 

"What is this?"

 

Lyarra huffed and came over to see what could have possibly caused such a powerful scowl to touch her husband's face. There wasn't anything she could think of as offensive inside the little oak jewelry casket. At least not offensive enough to make him look so murderous.

 

" _ Oh _ !" It was a piece of jewelry Lyarra had had for years, but never worn.

 

"Oh?"

 

"It was my great-grandmother's." Lyarra explained, reaching inside and gently taking out the scrap of black velvet and the gift she'd lovingly wrapped in years before. Oberyn's prodding had disturbed the wrapping, revealing the piece of jewelry hidden at the bottom of the casket. She could feel the sharpness of his curiosity, so she went on reluctantly.

 

"Father gave it to me when I grew old enough to have a room outside the nursery, along with the jewelry box. It was the first thing I owned with a lock upon it."

 

"Where you wrapped his gift up and never removed it?" He prompted and Lyarra bit her lip. For good or ill, her husband was intelligent enough to make the necessary leap to understand her hesitation to speak further. "Lord Stark  _ asked _ you not to wear it, didn't he?"

 

Lyarra nodded.

 

"Because," Now her husband was angry again, "You were a  _ bastard _ , and his wife would be wroth that he gifted you an heirloom of his family."

 

His moods since their wedding had confounded Lyarra. He was not harsh to her. In truth, sometimes she was surprised by the patience that the Prince showed her in their limited time together during daylight hours. At night he was either in want of sleep and happy to pursue it, or his mind and body turned to passion. Lyarra found, to her embarrassment, that she was learning far more about her own wants in bed and her husband's desires than she was learning of being a wife or even the kind of man her husband truly was.

 

"It has nothing to do with you." Lyarra pointed out, removing the golden torc and its wrapping from the box.

 

It felt rather like having him see her naked for the first time. She'd never shown anyone the gift. It had always felt as if, should it be seen, then she would lose her father's gift.

 

The bracelet was solid, as the old-fashioned jewelry of the mountain clans often was, and the gold was dark and not very pure, with a soft reddish tint. Made out of two thick, twisted cords of gold and capped with a snarling wolf's head on each end near the open gap where it could be forced around a woman's narrow wrist, the torc was a beautiful thing. If it was also primitive to Southron eyes, Lyarra loved it more for that. Arya Flint had worn it when she'd wed Rodrik Stark, and brought it and another just like it with her as part of her dowry. Then she'd passed them onto her daughter when the first Lyarra Stark had married Rickard, and from that union had come Lyarra's own father and his siblings.

 

"On the contrary, I find the idea that you felt you couldn't wear the one family heirloom you possess keenly relevant." Oberyn turned to look at her with anger coiled tight in his voice and the black depths of his eyes. "I have eight daughters, and I wed none of their mothers. Should one of my nephews treat them so within my family I would take them over my knee, or out to the training yard for a good thrashing and I would have done the same to my niece. Should anyone else so dare, it would be the last thing they did in life to be remembered for."

 

"That is your family, and in Dorne." Lyarra felt herself flush and quickly wrapped up the torc and returned it to the casket, shutting it and locking it away before her fingers nervously returned to the ring upon her own hand.

 

"Is it too much?"

 

"What?"

 

"The ring." Oberyn interjected, reaching down and stilling her hands until her long white fingers were splayed over the bronzed palms of his own and she had to look down at the great ruby and its heavy setting. "Is it too large or heavy? I told Doran it was gaudy, but he insisted."

 

"Your brother chose my wedding ring?"

 

Lyarra felt something inside herself wince at that. Had you asked her an hour before if it would have hurt to hear the husband the Gods chose for her had not chosen her ring she would have said,  _ no _ . Her fondness for him was growing, but it was a cautious thing, inhibited by the yawning gap in age and experience. She found her husband pleasant, she liked him, and he was a source of endless curiosity for the things he knew and could teach her about life. None of that should have left her open to the sudden sting she felt.

 

"No." Oberyn replied, then let out a low hissing noise as his temper spiked.

 

Lyarra took a cautious step back, surprised to feel his anger directed at her. Then she felt it veer off and lost connection with the tenuous bond she shared with her soulmate as he looked up. To her surprise, his expression was as contrite as it was frustrated.

 

"I'm not angry with you." He then held his hands out. "Truly, come here, please?"

 

It was a request, not an edict, so Lyarra went. He enfolded her in his arms and Lyarra rested her hands on his chest, but stood stiffly. Suddenly all the physical comfort she'd found in his presence in the first few nights in their marriage had leached away. Stubbornly, rather than releasing her, Oberyn curled an arm around her shoulders and rubbed along her spine with his other hand as his chin rested against the crown of her head. She pettily hoped her curls were getting up his nose and tangling in his eyelashes.

 

"You have the thickest hair I've ever known." Her murmured, and she thought she'd successfully irritated him until he began to rub his cheek against her curls. "Lyarra,  _ I _ chose your ring. I will admit that I did not put as much thought into it as I should, and when Doran asked to see it I realized the stone was likely too large and too dark for a girl as young as yourself, or with your coloring. You're a creature of the pale moonlight, Lyarra, with beauty made for pearls and diamonds."

 

"I love it." Lyarra breathed, unable to speak as she stood there with her face pressed into the soft material of the orange velvet surcoat he was wearing.

 

"I'm glad." His voice was sincere, and then shifted to wry as he went on. "I began to understand the solemnity of the North, I think."

 

Lyarra wriggled slightly backwards in the circle of his arms to look suspiciously up at the false earnestness of his expression.

 

"Indeed." He went on, the innocent look wavering as it fought a losing battle against the man's customary smirk. "I've determined that you've all been trained from birth to aspire to some kind of noble misery. I begin to think I shall enjoy breaking you of it."

 

Lyarra frowned up at his cheek and he openly grinned at her. It was a truly rotten expression. Like that time Theon had slipped into her room while she and Gwyn were going through her new smallclothes and he'd spied the lacy, minimal underthings she now had to endure along with the embroidered stays and such that she wore under her gowns. Both she and Gwyn had hit him before he'd left, but she was still certain that he'd snatched something off the bed. Lyarra decided she didn't want to know what he'd do with her purloined underpants.

 

If Theon managed to really annoy her before she left for the South, however, Lyarra was telling both Oberyn and Robb about the theft. Robb would be furious and go demand what their foster-brother was thinking. Oberyn would likely find it amusing, but choose to make an issue of it just to cause trouble. Either way, Theon's terrified expression would be priceless.

 

"I also think Lady Jynessa has been remiss in your lessons." Oberyn's face fell into slightly more serious lines. "You're a princess of House Martell. Our words-"

 

He was cut off by a knock at the door. Ser Daemon, who was standing guard, announced Lord Gargalen. Oberyn muttered something under his breath about a boat oar, a goat, and a bucket of lard that seemed incredibly unsafe. It was also disgusting and Lyarra pulled a face as she stepped away from her husband and moved to receive the venerable Lord with the good grace he deserved. Oberyn threw himself into a chair in front of the fire and glared into the flames, his foul mood resurrected once again. As she poured a cup of wine for the aging man, Ser Daemon knocked again.

 

"Lords Robb, Bran, and Rickon Stark wish to know if the Princess has time to to spar this evening?"

 

"Of course I do." Lyarra immediately stepped towards the door, reaching for her cloak. "My Prince-"

 

"Ser Arron goes with you."

 

Oberyn waved a hand at her, never turning his eyes or scowl from the flames, and Lyarra gratefully took the offered escape. As she'd known, four direwolf pups, already more than knee-high and starting to gain a certain lankiness to their frames as they grew, were with them. Ghost, the only she-wolf amongst them, had managed to get Shaggydog down by the scruff of his neck, the pup play-growling as he flailed his legs in the hallway and tried to regain his feet. Greywind was standing, dignified and on guard, at Robb's side and Bran's own pup was permitting Ser Arron, who was now Lyarra's official guard and obligated to be by her side unless Oberyn said otherwise, to scratch his ears.

 

"What do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" Lyarra tried to jest, still feeling a little raw from the storm of strong emotion that her husband could be.

 

"We have to make the most of the time we have." Bran's quick answer caused Lyarra's heart to ache nearly as much as Rickon's swift denial of, " _ Nobody takes Lyarra! _ "

 

"Judging from the sheet Lyarra's already been thoroughly taken." Theon, who Lyarra hadn't seen lurking further down the hall japed.

 

Lyarra felt her face flame, but was rewarded when Robb's cry of outrage neatly distracted Theon from the other present threat. Ser Arron Qorgyle wasn't an especially tall man, but he was a large man. Fully grown and heavily muscled, he was surprisingly fast for his blocky frame. He was also standing closer to Theon than Robb, as Theon had the sense to put more than an arm's reach between them when he planned to make off-color remarks to Lyarra. He had only put twice a man's reach between himself and Ser Arron though, and that was his mistake.

 

"Ser Arron, please release him." Lyarra asked sweetly.

 

The Dornish Knight had swung around and taken two steps forward. Then he'd hooked the hand not holding his spear behind Theon's neck. A moment later the Greyjoy had found himself slammed face-first into the corridor's stone wall. While Ser Arron hadn't broken his nose or bloodied his lips, Theon had hit hard enough to have some  _ fine _ bruising in the morning.

 

"As you wish, Princess." He released Theon with a scowl. "Shall I address his disrespect more sharply?"

 

"If I were to have you punish all of the idiots in the world for their stupidity, you'd have no time to write any letters, Ser Arron."

 

Her smile was wolfish as she met Theon's surprised and rather embarrassed gaze; he'd apparently forgotten that her rank and marriage meant things besides the fact that she was leaving and now had to wear fancier clothing. Lyarra didn't blame him; she could go hours without remembering she was a Princess even in the midst of her lessons with Lady Jynessa. It still seemed to strange and unlikely to be real.

 

"We can't have that." Ser Daemon's tone was merry but his gaze hostile as he glared at Theon from his place by the door. "The man pines for his wife enough as is. If he couldn't write them, he'd never shut up."

 

Lyarra felt her lips turn up at that. Ser Arron was not a talkative man on most subjects. His uxoriousness, however, was apparently as legendary in Dorne as his terrifying abilities with a morningstar in battle.

 

"At least I'm not  _ pining _ for a burly blacksmith who thinks I've a strong interest in his bronze work." Ser Arron snorted, stepping back and bowing deeply to her. "As you will, Princess."

 

Ser Daemon laughed at the sally. Robb merely looked scandalized. Rickon didn't care, as he was now wrestling on the floor of the corridor with Greywind and Shaggydog as if he were a wolf pup himself. Bran looked like he was trying to work out what was going on. Lyarra quickly reached down and snatched her brother up out of the tangle of furry limbs on the floor and balanced Rickon on her hip as she tried to think of a way to distract Bran.

 

"Where are Sansa and Arya?"

 

"Waiting for Gwyn with Mother." Robb shot Theon a final reproachful look full of promise of vengeance to be had later. "Father wanted to have a family meal tonight and had it set up in the small meeting room. Uncle Benjen  _ insisted _ on handling the food."

 

Lyarra made the same horrified face that she was sure Arya had made at that news.

 

"Sansa won't be pleased."

 

"I imagine not." Bran agreed, grinning. "I bet I can guess what's in it first, though!"

 

In a quirk of his nature, their only uncle had taken a certain delight in cooking after he'd joined the Night's Watch. It wasn't the love of kitchens and bubbling cauldrons and carefully mixed, delicious recipes that Gwyn had. Instead, their uncle took a deep and slightly evil pleasure in what their father referred to as _ "field cooking".  _ He liked to fix barely edible recipes from unknown sources and then dare his relatives to figure out what he'd just served them.

 

Their somber father happily leapt into this strange game. No-one would believe that solemn, ice-eyed Lord Eddard Stark fed his wife and children mystery meat cooked by his own brother. That's precisely what he did, however, and very insistently. Who could turn him down when Old Nan said it was the only time she ever saw the two eldest living Starks act like the boys they'd apparently once been years before the Rebellion and grief befell them?

 

"It's probably squirrel." Theon maintained. "It's usually squirrel."

 

"Marmot." Lyarra replied at the same time as Robb.

 

" _ Cat _ ." Rickon announced as he squeezed Lyarra around the neck.

 

"Uncle Benjen wouldn't feed us a cat!" Bran's horror spurred even Ser Arron to a chuckle.

 

"He fed us  _ rat _ once." Robb argued. "Mother still hasn't forgiven him. What do you bet she'll fill up on bread?"

 

Lyarra smiled, something inside her twisting painfully until she had to fight to make sure none of her siblings noticed the tears in her eyes. Unsurprisingly, she failed.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

She started when Rickon touched her face. His expression was worried and upset. She was relieved they'd just walked into the yard, because it gave her a ready excuse.

 

"Nothing's wrong, lil'red." She kissed his nose just to watch him wrinkle it. "Just the wind in my eyes."

 

There was no graceful way to say she was heartbroken that she'd never have to be afraid of her dearest uncle trying to serve her rat again.

 

* * *

 

"Her sisters?"

 

"Yes, my Prince." Ser Arron confirmed. "You've said before not to interrupt her time with her family if possible. She's in the Stark Family quarters with the Lady Sansa and Lady Arya, and the little Westerlands girl. The Princess is safe for the night, and I think she's feeling their loss."

 

"Let her have this time." Oberyn agreed, but it still felt a little bitter to say it.

 

He would have no more time with his sister, and he was still no closer to avenging her death.

 

"She's a kindhearted young thing, your Princess." Ser Arron went on, surprising Oberyn at the easy conversation until he added, "She makes me miss my girls."

 

"Don't start." Oberyn pointed a finger at his fellow Dornish warrior. "If  _ you _ start whining about missing your daughters,  _ I'll _ begin pining for mine, then we'll  _ both _ be drunk by the end of the night."

 

"At least I don't have to worry about you trying to bed me." Ser Arron snorted, then glared lightly at his Prince. "Or my wife."

 

"Preferably both of you." Oberyn replied with a shrug and a smirk, though that was another fact that left him feeling resentful. He decided to change the subject. "I've already spoken to the rest of the party. Take Ser Daemon and tell the guard to be ready to leave in two days. Lord Stark's preparations have gone more quickly than was expected, and I've decided that I won't suffer further delays. I want to be out of King's Landing before the year is spent."

 

Ser Arron raised his eyebrows but he didn't say anything further. It wasn't in his nature to ask excessive questions. Oberyn was grateful for it.

 

"A wise choice."

 

Lord Gargalen was still in Oberyn's guest quarters. It had grown late, but they hadn't exhausted each other's company. Oberyn appreciated the fact that his uncle could offer quiet companionship when he was in a foul mood, and after Oberyn had issued his initial orders about their travel plans his uncle had left him be. It wasn't until Oberyn's need for action prompted him to ask his uncle for a cyvasse game that they'd had any conversation. Then it had centered around Syrella's scholarship, how to manage Lia's desire to enter a tourney outside of Dorne, and Quentyn's promise as a future Prince. They'd talked of calm things, family things, and some of Oberyn's foul temper had eroded.

 

"A wise choice that I would like to know your reasoning for. Doran did not ask you to stay in King's Landing overlong, but we both know that between questioning the servants there and putting the Parren girl back amidst the lions she so fears, it will be our best chance to get names for your sister."

 

"I'm aware of it." Oberyn shifted to stand with his back against one side of the fireplace, where the warmth of the hearth that could seep into his bones and rest with his frustration.

 

" _ And _ ?"

 

"I'm also aware that half of my daughters were conceived in a single night," Oberyn said with quiet intensity. "The rest were likely conceived within a fortnight of Ellaria going off moon tea."

 

"And your wife  _ is _ young and fertile."

 

Oberyn winced at that and pulled a hand roughly over his face, letting the scrape of his calluses over his face ground him.

 

"Can you  _ not _ describe her so?"

 

"You've yet to reconcile yourself with her age, then." Lord Gargalen's dark eyes were speculative and unreadable and Oberyn suddenly wished dearly for a chance to talk to his older brother.

 

"It is not… simple." Oberyn settled on saying. "For today, at least, I've no urge to discuss it."

 

"I make a poor substitute for my other nephew, then?" Lord Gargalen smiled up at him and Oberyn shook his head, refusing to answer and veering back to his original subject.

 

"The Gods wouldn't have brought us together if we weren't meant for children. I'll have seen forty namedays shortly." Oberyn crossed his arms over his chest. "It would make no sense to delay, and likely it  _ can't _ be delayed. Without moon tea such things simply take their course. If she hasn't already caught, she will soon. I don't want her showing in the Usurper's court."

 

Lord Gargalen considered his words and then nodded.

 

"If her condition is apparent through other symptoms?"

 

"My daughters treat their mothers gently in the womb." Oberyn stated with a certain amount of pride.

 

He had no idea how three of his lovers had fared in their pregnancies, actually. He did know, that Nymeria's mother had been able to hide her pregnancy completely for its duration. She was a tall woman, and Nym had been carried low and small, her Voltene noblewoman of a mother hadn't even had to use the excuse of having grown fat. When he'd come to collect his infant daughter she'd bragged that she'd never known a moment's illness.

 

Ellaria, Oberyn recalled with grief tangled up with old joy, had been much the same. At times her appetite had been weak and he'd been forced to tempt her with whatever delicacies he could think of. She'd never been violently nauseous, however, just often very tired in the first three or four moons.

 

"Ellaria was faint with both Lia and Dorea." His uncle reminded him and Oberyn frowned.

 

"True." Oberyn agreed. "If Lyarra's symptoms are obvious we will leave. I will not have my unborn child carried through a lion's den, or around that _ lurching oaf _ who calls himself King. Lady Gwyn travels with us, and I know that girl knows something."

 

"I agree, though you'd said you had told your wife she is to be left be." Lord Gargalen raised an eyebrow at him and the Viper offered him a cold blooded smile.

 

"I said I would leave the girl be, and I plan to be the soul of courtesy to the child." Oberyn explained. "I've spoken to our own ladies. Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria will begin leaning upon the girl in the wheelhouse as we go south. Nothing too aggressive, just enough to keep her nervous. Her origins mean that the rest of the party will treat her with care, as she's my ward now and my wife's lady, but that will not make them warm to her."

 

"Ah." Lord Gargalen agreed. "A gauntlet in one hand, a velvet glove in the other."

 

"With a frightened maid who is only barely three-and-ten, it shouldn't take to long to gain her trust." Oberyn shrugged and then frowned at the indecipherable look his uncle was giving him. "What? You disapprove."

 

"I'm not  _ that _ kind-hearted where children are concerned." Oberyn's uncle waved off the suggestion. "We'll be doing the girl no real harm, and if she does know any Lannister secrets then the safest thing for her will be to destroy them so that she may live on without them ever knowing the child was aware of anything in the first place. I'm not concerned about that."

 

"Then what?"

 

"Your temper." Lord Gargalen's tone was that of a man relating a simple fact; non-prejudicial and non-judgemental and all the more irritating for that. "You're a passionate man, Oberyn, and all that has happened strikes closest to your deepest pains. Your wife is younger than the daughter you lost, you miss Ellaria and will do so for the rest of your life."

 

Oberyn breathed out slowly, looking away as the pain welled up and fought to turn itself into anger. He refused to live up to expectations, however. His uncle was the only one brave enough, or unkind enough, to have once told the Red Viper that he hid behind his fear.

 

"If you do lose your temper and frighten the girl, this plan could backfire completely." The Lord of Salt Shore went on. "You'll be carrying a child who feels hunted from all sides right back to a group of people who are frightening, but familiar, and distant kin besides. If Lady Gwyn goes running back to the Lannisters, we may have lost our chance yet again."

 

"I will not lose my temper." Oberyn insisted. "Too much is at stake, and I'm not a reckless child. Moreover, I do not believe there is any risk of her choosing the Lannisters over us. It would mean separating herself from my wife, and if she's grafted herself tightly enough to Lyarra to leave her safehaven in Winterfell, she'll not readily abandon her out of fear of even me."

 

"A nest of vipers or a lion's den is a hard choice." Gargalen countered. "Especially when you've already been thrown to the wolves."

 

"Ned Stark told me that the Parren girl and I had more in common than I know."

 

"What could a Prince of Dorne possibly have in common with a girl of mixed merchant stock from the Westerlands?" Lord Gargalen sat up in surprise.

 

Oberyn, out of a perverse sense of triumph at having surprised his formidable uncle, walked slowly over to the sideboard to pour two cups of wine. He wandered back idly, stopping to run his fingers over the carvings on his wife's newly delivered trunks.

 

"It is just as well that Doran's generosity with the innoculations led to half of Westeros gifting us with gold. The coffers are overflowing nicely, so I can well afford to supply my wife with a proper wardrobe." Oberyn frowned as his mind went back to the strange golden torc he'd seen while looking through his wife's shamefully meager jewelry box. "She'll look spectacular in fine silks, don't you think? Something thin; so delicate it's nearly translucent. We can't burden her with heavier fabrics in the heat. Lyarra will be unused to it."

 

"Will you enjoy shocking her more, or watching her grow fat with child?" Lord Gargalen gave in before Oberyn, knowing the futility of dealing with Oberyn when he was in this sort of mood.

In truth, Oberyn had no idea what Ned Stark had meant. He couldn't fathom what he might have in common with the girl. He'd seen the Usurper's Dog bite his tongue, though. Had Ned Stark been able to snatch those words back out of the air and swallow them, he would have. He was sure that whatever the Quiet Wolf thought he had in common with the little blonde was the key to getting the names and the beginning of Elia's justice.

 

His uncle's words put a smile on his face, however. Oberyn accepted the distraction gladly. It was a picture that pleased him immensely to think of.

 

"It's been too long since I've held a babe of my own." Oberyn smiled and then shook his head. "Dorea's nearly five. Where has the time gone?"

 

"It will be nice to have another Martell in the world." Lord Gargalen smiled broadly back and laced his hands together over his flat stomach. "Your Sand Snakes are a joy, but it'll reassure the smallfolk to see the family name grow. Despite what the Starks think, you've only the one cousin."

 

"Yes." Oberyn nodded. The foul, changeful mood of the day began to unwind. "Lyarra will be beautiful as she grows big, but I'll have to watch her closely. She'll be fifteen when she delivers, likely enough, and that's younger than I like."

 

"It is just as well, then, that's she has at least  _ part _ of a Maester to wait upon her." Lord Gargalen drawled and Oberyn shot him an unamused look.

 

" _ Please _ , we both knew I grew bored with the Citadel's hidebound philosophies, not learning itself." Oberyn scoffed. "I could have forged more than one chain with what I learned of poisons alone in the East, and I studied far beyond that."

 

"It's always nice to have a midwife in the family."

 

"Hah." Oberyn dryly, then smiled smugly. "You cannot embarrass me. I was a  _ joy _ to deliver the daughters Ellaria gave me. I will be equally blessed to deliver the rest of my children."

 

"Indeed." His uncle's smile was soft, but the older man's eyes were laughing when he got the final word in. "I beg to be allowed in the room to hear your wife's reaction when you tell her that, however."

 

"Drink your wine, Uncle." Oberyn scoffed, and followed his own advice.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roadtrip!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to sex, some making out, and Ned Stark being grumpy in this chapter.

**Chapter Eleven - 297 A.C.**

 

Lyarra looked longingly out of one of the small, arched windows of the wheelhouse. It was a fine Northern day. The wind was a brisk chill, and everything was cloaked in a thick, silvery mist that dulled the sharp edges of the rocky gray ground of the Barrowlands.

 

It was cold enough that the mist hung heavy on the air and dusted crystalline droplets over every surface, clinging like diamonds to the thick gorse scrub that clung to the harsh ground. On the rare occasion when some sliver of sunlight peeked through the charcoal clouds overhead, everything would turn to a glimmering landscape of refraction before the soothing silver blanket returned.

 

In short, it was a beautiful day for a Northern heart to feast on, and Lyarra was stuck inside the wheelhouse. For the first few days of their journey, she'd been spared that. Lord Gargalen preferred to ride, and he'd become her default teacher in political lessons. Lyarra's husband happily participated, and others in their party contributed as they rode. Learning with the wind in her hair was a wonderful experience. Even Arya had managed to contain her need to gallup about enough to join in the lessons.

 

"Your Grace?"

 

Lyarra turned around guiltily.

 

"House Toland holds Ghost Hill, on the shores of the Sea of Dorne near the Broken Arm. Their seat takes its name from the ghosts of the sailors whose ships wrecked upon the rocky shoals and submerged islands off the coast. Lady Nymella Toland currently holds the House's title. She has two daughters, Lady Valena and Lady Teora."

 

"Very good." Lady Jynessa nodded. "What are House Toland's colors and why did they take them?"

 

"The Toland arms are a green dragon biting its tail on a golden field." Lyarra recalled, having enjoyed the tale. "During the First Dornish War, Aegon the Conq-."

 

"Aegon the First, Princess, we do not refer to the man as  _ the Conqueror _ in Dorne." Lady Myria reminded her and Lyarra blushed but pushed on without comment at her own mistake.

 

"The  _ Targaryen King  _ found no success in his efforts and challenged Lord Toland to a duel. Upon killing Lord Toland, however, Aegon found that the man was no more than House Toland's mad fool. After the battle House Toland took gold and green as their colors to remember the brave fool's motley."

 

"And the dragon was chosen because?"

 

"They claim it was to symbolize the endless nature of time, but it's strongly believed they were either mocking Aegon for his duel against the jester or the fact that his dragons were not proven as a universal tool for easy conquest."

 

"Nicely done." Lady Jynessa smiled at her and sat back to take a sip from the mug of hot tisane she was cradling in her hands.

 

Lyarra looked over at where where Gwyn was diligently working on embroidering a shawl and tried to summon up a glare. The heavy black silk was a parting gift to the girl from Lady Stark, and Gwyn had delightedly taken out her hooked needle and tiny glass beads and was now embroidering across it a glimmering rainbow of flowers and green vines.

 

Her friend had been the one who'd chosen the mix of herbs in the tisane. With a good amount of dried lavender in it, as well as something tangy that Lyarra didn't recognize, the tea was soothing to all of the senses. It also threatened to put Lyarra to sleep in the warmth of the wheelhouse. Lyarra had exchanged it for another mix and was just waiting for the kettle to boil again upon the wheelhouse's small stove.

 

Gwyn didn't look up from her work, though Lyarra was sure that she was aware of any eyes on her. Lyarra felt her glare soften immediately at the thought. Though Gwyn did not enjoy riding, she'd been on the solid, spotted rouncey as often as Lyarra had been on Ash.

 

Lyarra had given Gwyn space and not asked her another word about her past. Oberyn had been true to his word and hadn't pressed her further on what she might or might not know of Lord Tywin's bannermen. That did not mean that any of the other Dornish were willing to let it go. While no direct questions were asked on the subject, a great deal of curiosity had been directed at Gwyn herself.

 

This was especially obvious with Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria. At first they'd both tried to be motherly towards the Westerlands maid. Then, when that failed, they'd been kind but firmly proper in their behavior. Lyarra had wanted to bang her head against a tree as she watched Gwyn's sharp answers become careful courteous evasions. Finally, Lyarra felt her own nerves draw tight as Gwyn stopped speaking at all unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then her answers were short and vague.

 

Lyarra had finally taken matters into her own hands. She'd put herself firmly between her friend and anyone else. Then, when either of the Ladies attempted to address Gwyn, she interrupted. Lyarra might not be comfortable with being a Princess, but she knew that as Prince Oberyn's wife neither of the older, more worldly, and intimidating women who were currently giving her lessons could refuse to answer any question she asked. Lyarra proceeded to ask them all, and was relieved to see her friend's shoulders relax even as Gwyn remained silent.

 

"Now, let's move on to-." Lady Jynessa's comment was cut off by two sharp raps at the door to the wheelhouse.

 

"Probably Ser Daemon whining about the weather again." Ser Arron grunted, as Lyarra tried to stifle a smile.

 

Some of Oberyn's escort, most notably his uncle, had ridden to White Harbor. They would take the ship that had originally been intended to bear the whole party back to Dorne and instead take a cargo to Braavos. After having made a profit and allowing Lord Gargalen time to carry out some business with the Iron Bank, they would then sail for King's Landing. From there Lyarra would be borne to her new home with the rest of the party.

 

The rest of the Dornish party did not display the stoicism that Lyarra had grown to expect from everyone of her acquaintance. While every good Northerner  _ complained _ about the weather, nobody  _ avoided _ it. To do so, especially if you were a man grown, was seen as a sign of weakness.

 

The Dornish did not share this belief. In fact, Lyarra had watched a steady stream of knights attempt to claim a place in the wheelhouse since setting out. It was a legitimate guard post as the last line of defense for the ladies within. If it also happened to offer warm drink, the occasional hot snack, and a warm seat by the cast iron and brick stove that heated the wheelhouse, well, Lyarra supposed that was just happenstance.

 

Ser Daemon Sand was particularly bad about wanting to take the warm seat by the stove. So far he'd been able to monopolize it as well. However, as Lyarra had spent all day in the wheelhouse and her husband had personally assigned Ser Arron as her guard, the one-eyed man had steadfastly refused to leave the warm seat all day and left his fellow knights to suffer the mist Lyarra had been admiring only moments before.

 

"Prince's orders, _pretty_ _boy_ ," Ser Arron pulled the slide back over the metal grating on the door so he could shout out. " _I'm_ here guarding the Princess and _you're_ out there guarding our backs!"

 

"While I'm pleased you find me pretty, Ser Arron, kindly shut up and open the door!"

 

Lyarra clapped a hand over her mouth at the short, annoyed tone of her husband's voice, and realized her own restlessness might have had less to do with tiring of her lessons than she'd thought. Now that she was paying attention she could all but feel nettled annoyance radiating from her soulmate, with a not inconsiderable splash of misery. Judging from the way Ser Arron snapped into attention, he was seeing an expression to match the surliness Lyarra was perceiving.

 

A moment later and Ser Arron Qorgle was gone. He'd managed to somehow step down onto the narrow platform that jutted past the door. Then he'd turned at the same time that Prince Oberyn had hopped onto it, grasped Prince Oberyn's reins, and swung onto the horse as Prince Oberyn swung into the moving wheelhouse. It was a demonstration of horsemanship that had Lyarra staring in delight, but seemed to surprise neither Lady Jynessa nor Lady Myria.

 

"It's ill-bred to flaunt so, my Prince." Lady Jynessa huffed lightly, the older woman carrying a tone of exasperation.

 

"I'm flaunting nothing." Her husband replied, his tone clipped as he pulled off his wet, muddy boots while leaning against one of the wheelhouse's walls, and divested himself of his damp fur cloak. "I'm too cold to flaunt."

 

"Then the North's climate has succeeded where nothing else in the known world could triumph."

 

"You cannot possibly be so cold. It's summer, and a good deal above freezing." Lyarra permitted herself a laugh and, without thinking, reached her hands out as she now found herself doing automatically whenever her husband complained about the cold.

 

In a fit of pure childishness, her husband reached past her hands and buried his fingers in the arch of Lyarra's throat between her shoulder and her chin. Squealing as the ice cold digits pressed against sensitive flesh, she batted his hands away. Feeling herself blush as she scowled at her husband, Lyarra glared. She still reached out and caught his hands, chafing them between hers.

 

"A man old enough to be my father, and yet  _ Bran _ is too old for that stunt." Lyarra scolded before she could help herself.

 

She couldn't help but wonder if she would offend her husband by doing so. Oberyn enjoyed sass in essentially all forms, she'd found. That might be different, however, than being scolded as if he were a child by a wife who he hadn't wanted, and who was younger than half of his daughters.

 

"Then I shall have to remind him of its usefulness." Her husband said impishly as he lowered himself to the cushions beside her and then shamelessly pushed his stocking clad feet beneath the warm cushions where Gwyn was sitting, causing her to squeak and nearly topple from her own pillows. "After all, my hands are no longer cold."

 

"You're intolerable." Lyarra muttered mulishly.

 

"These Northern ladies are so innocent where men are concerned, aren't they Prince Oberyn?" Lady Myria commented sweetly. "Normally women have figured out that you're not worth more than a night's trouble by the morning after."

 

"Lies and slander." The Viper remained undented. "I am universally beloved by all of the ladies of my acquaintance."

 

Arya awoke from the nap she'd fallen into. As if in defense of the Prince's absurd statement she quickly quit the bed she'd been curled up in with Bran. Crawling over her brother, Arya caused him to produce a wheezing sound that Lyarra knew meant one of her sister's bony knees had ended up somewhere sensitive. Oberyn apparently agreed, because he winced in sympathy. At the foot of the bed, Nymeria, Ghost, and Bran's nameless pup lay in a large tumble of furry limbs. Bran's pup got up to sniffle at his face, but Nymeria and Ghost merely flicked open their eyes before curling up more tightly amidst the furs and quilts and going back to sleep.

 

"Lady Arya, what is the seventeenth rule of combat?"

 

"I don't know, we've only gotten up to number six!" Arya protested. "I want to go outside and ride! I shouldn't be stuck in here for lessons with Lyarra! I'm not going to be anybody's princess."

 

"What about lessons with me?" Gwyn asked, speaking for the first time in hours. "You slept straight through doing our sums, and I'm supposed to be helping you with that. Even I learned how to do sums at your age, and nobody ever intended me to marry more than a household knight. You're a Lord Paramount's daughter. Being a hoyden is an eccentricity, being  _ illiterate _ is an embarrassment."

 

"Yes, well, you skipped reading and  _ you're _ supposed to concentrate on that." Arya glared at the blonde for daring to comment. "Besides, we're on an  _ adventure _ . There's no time for reading!"

 

"On the contrary, I've done some of my best reading on adventures."

 

Oberyn countered and reached out, taking his hands from where Lyarra had been idly chafing them and catching Arya beneath the armpits to drag her over beside him. Lyarra watched in surprise as her sister allowed this manhandling. She did shoot a suspicious glare up at the Prince once she was settled on the cushions Ser Arron had vacated, however.

 

"What  _ is _ the seventeenth rule of combat?"

 

"Only foster grudges intentionally." The Red Viper was blunt. "Striking a man in the balls fosters a grudge."

 

Lyarra shook her head and took the opportunity to stand. The wheelhouse had been somewhat refitted to allow for easier travel and greater comfort for the Dornish ladies. The furniture had been removed for the most part, leaving only the large beds that ran horizontally across the back of the wheelhouse. Both the beds were plain wooden platforms, one overtop of the other in bunks, but were wide and piled high enough with rushes and feather ticks to be very comfortable. Currently the bottom bunk was a nest of slightly disturbed quilts and furs out of which Arya had scrambled with only two direwolf pups sleeping peaceably at the foot.

 

"You're well, Bran?" Lyarra bent over as the wheelhouse continued to jostle down the road, gripping the smooth wooden planking on her left side as she knelt. "Bran?"

 

"I'm fine." Bran insisted, wincing only a little as he emerged from the covers in a rumpled tunic, buckskin breeches, and a pair of wooly knit socks. "She barely touched me."

 

Lyarra nodded and said nothing else as Bran scrambled forward to join the rest of the party with his own pup at his heels. The front of the wheel house had a tall cabinet filled with crockery and other supplies that had not been relegated to the baggage. Located a little further down one side was the small, but very efficient, masonry and iron stove keeping the wheelhouse warm. Scattered around it on the floor were thick carpets and a plethora of cushions, furs, and blankets that migrated about the low folding table that served as a desk as they all worked on their various lessons.

 

Her husband had taken her absence as the perfect opportunity. He'd already scared Gwyn out of her seat by shoving his feet under her. While Lyarra knew the move was mostly born of cold feet, Lyarra still felt annoyed for her friend's sake. Gwyn had given up her place by the stove and retreated from the man as he happily claimed the warmest spot. A goal that Lyarra knew he'd likely had in mind as soon as he got inside and Arya scrambled out of bed to claim the spot on the other side of the stove that Ser Arron had previously occupied.

 

"Where are we now and how far have we traveled?" Arya wanted to know.

 

"We are where we are, and we have traveled far as we got yesterday in the same length of time time." Oberyn replied.

 

"How far was that?"

 

"I don't recall, do you?"

 

Lyarra covered her mouth as her husband proceeded to thoroughly vex her sister into a lesson in sums. After Arya had been forced to do the requisite division and multiplication required to find the pace of their party's progress on a slate the Lady Jynessa produced, Oberyn distracted Lyarra's sister from her ire at this with a story of his time in Essos. Lyarra tried to hide it, as she was finding that Oberyn's arrogance got worse when you paid him too much mind when he was obviously showing off, but it was futile. She was as spellbound as her younger siblings as he wove tales of his time founding and leading a sellsword company.

 

"As  _ diverting _ as you are, My Prince, mayhaps we might enjoy some music as well?" Lady Myria interjected after he'd brought his third tale to a close.

 

Bran made a disappointed noise as he sat next to Oberyn, listening with wide eyes as his direwolf pup sprawled across his legs and enjoyed a thorough ear rub.

 

"I wouldn't be averse." Her husband allowed and reached out to happily accept the cup hot herbal tisane that Lyarra handed him.

 

It was one of Old Nan's mixes. The tea tasted tart and then promptly left a pleasant burn in the sinuses as they cleared. She claimed it would stave off head and chest colds in the worst weather. Lyarra was hoping that it would do some good for the Dornish and planned on coaxing Gwyn into helping her fix a large cauldron of it when they made camp. Her husband's party wasn't fighting any brigands on the King's Road in the North, but almost all of it was battling the sniffles.

 

"Lady Gwyn, you played very well last night in camp. Would you favor us with a song?" Lady Jynessa went on and Lyarra relaxed in relief.

 

"Of course, my Lady." Gwyn rose to get the hardened leather case that currently lived in one of the cabinets of the wheelhouse.

 

"I've never seen an instrument quite like yours." Lady Jynessa added.

 

"I'm not surprised, Lady Jynessa." Gwyn stated, her tone level and careful.

 

"Indeed, it's a sad fact that the Westerlands and its habits have not been much welcomed in Dorne of late." Lady Myria commented casually and Lyarra stiffened, ready to intervene if her friend was in for another bout of verbal prodding.

 

"I meant that it is a  _ peasant _ guitar, Lady Jynessa." Gwyn replied as she settled down amongst the cushions with the guitar across her knees, and when she looked up a small innocent smile had fitted across her face and a hint of the fire Lyarra had found hidden under all her friend's fears had crept into the dark blue of her eyes. "The nobility of Dorne is known far and wide for its discernment, after all."

 

Lyarra was by no means gifted with words. She didn't hold with them and hadn't learned much about how to insult someone with a compliment, despite her friendship with Gwyn. She could, however, recognize the fact that her friend had just called the intimidating gray haired matriarch a snob. She'd even managed to lump most of Lady Jynessa's countrymen into the the jab.

 

"It has twelve strings, yes?" Oberyn interrupted and Gwyn nodded cautiously.

 

"Yes, Your Grace."

 

He flicked his fingers at that, gesturing for her to play. Gwyn struck up a lively tune with a good beat. He frowned, however and gestured for her to stop. Lyarra stiffened, worried at what Oberyn might say. For all that he'd been kind and diverting with her little siblings, she knew he wasn't in a good mood. Her husband's mean streak was more developed than Gwyn's had had a chance to grow into as it was backed by his endless confidence…

 

"A song usually includes  _ words _ as well as a melody, Lady Gwyn."

 

"Then you will have to importune your Princess, Your Grace, for anything I sing is a punishment rather than a diversion." Gwyn answered saltily and Lyarra couldn't help snickering, drawing her husband's attention.

 

Gwyn couldn't sing, but it came less from having an awful voice like Arya, and more from an inability to relax into the song. Arya would belt out a tune and sound like a dying cat with every apparent glee. Gwyn's otherwise pleasant, moderate soprano fell flat every time she sang as she spent all of her effort on watching those listening to her rather than controlling her vocals. Lyarra didn't want to see another thing added to the list of irritating things that Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria had already discovered and applied to Gwyn.

 

"How is it that I have married you and no-one mentioned you sing?" Her husband demanded.

Lyarra flushed, and before she could think of how to answer that, Bran spoke.

 

"Father doesn't let Lyarra exhibit." Bran answered quickly, his tone apologetic and a little embarrassed as it always was whenever something hopelessly intertwined with Lyarra's previous bastard state was mentioned.

 

Lyarra held in a wince. She didn't blame her brother. When she was little she'd sang quite often, and everywhere. As she'd aged, however, and her voice grew more mature and richer as she gained control over her range that had changed. She was sure it was Lady Stark who'd demanded her father stop her singing in front of anyone who might matter, just as Lyarra was certain she had to be the one who asked him to stop Lyarra from the harp lessons she'd begged out of Septa Mordane.

 

"Lord Stark no longer has any say in the matter." The flare of Oberyn's temper was sharp across their bond, but the hand he laid on her arm was almost as warm as the purr in his voice. "May I beg a song from you, wife?"

 

"No, but you might trade me one." Lyarra was determined not to be embarrassed by the man today.

 

Well,  _ again _ today. They'd still been abed when Oberyn had answered Ser Daemon's request to enter their tent. While they weren't doing anything under the covers, Lyarra had been all too embarrassed to have the man walk in to report on the status of the horses and baggage as he did every morning while Oberyn had a leg and arm thrown over her and her head was resting on his chest. They both might have been well-hidden by the covers Lyarra hadn't yet forgiven him for his unthinking shamelessness.

 

"And what  _ service _ might I render my wife so to tempt her to entertain me?"

 

Lyarra didn't know what that smirk made her feel more like doing. On one hand, it left her with a strong desire to kiss the man. On the other, she really wanted to hit him in the back of the head with a nice solid chunk of firewood. Worse yet; she had the firm feeling that her husband knew of her dilemma and enjoyed it.

 

"A proper sparring match when we stop for the night, and one without complaints about the weather or the mud." Lyarra replied as haughtily as she could manage, which wasn't yet much. Haunter didn't come naturally to her. "Mud is a fact of life in the North, and likely anywhere else that isn't a desert. Whining about it changes nothing."

 

"I do not  _ whine _ ." Now he was scowling at her.

 

Arya snickered at him for his petulant tone and it served as a good distraction. While Arya grinned cheekily at her husband, Lyarra slipped out of her place beside him and moved over to sit beside Gwyn. This caused a general reshuffling of everyone for greater comfort. Soon Oberyn was sandwiched between the stove and Bran, with Arya claiming his legs as a pillow as she sprawled out across the open area. Bran's pup had at least decided it was more pleasant to join his littermates than be surrounded by so many humans. Oberyn had stretched out his long legs to fill most of what had been open space in the wheelhouse while everyone else was politely folded up, tailor-style, underneath their spread skirts.

 

"A lesson in swordsmanship for a song, then." Her husband finally agreed, his black eyes sparkling with challenge. "Though, if you expect a seasoned warrior such as myself to go out in such weather unnecessarily I expect it to be a song worthy of my  _ expertise _ ."

 

"I will allow you to be the judge of that." Lyarra announced and before she could turn to Gwyn her friend struck up a song.

 

Lyarra felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and her lips turn up just barely. She tried to catch Gwyn's eyes, but she was too busy watching her fingerwork. The song was complex, and haunting, slow without being simple, and the chords were difficult. Lyarra had taught Gwyn the song shortly after they'd begun to share a room, but she didn't play it often anymore. She complained that Lyarra's love of sad songs didn't need anyone to feed it, and usually insisted on something more upbeat.

 

With a soft smile on her face, Lyarra half-closed her eyes and began to sing the familiar, dirthful tune.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn's first thought, when the Parren girl began to play, was that he was surprised at the younger girl's skill. He'd seldom seen or heard such sure picking on such a complex song outside of a professional bard. Nor had he ever seen someone play a stringed instrument with a metal pick curled around their thumb as well as their fingers.

 

All other thought was obliterated from his mind as soon as his wife began to sing. He listened, rapt, as his quiet wife produced a liquid, lyrical singing voice he never would have imagined coming from a girl of four-and-ten. Moreover, the feeling infused into the song twisted him unwillingly along into the oncoming wave that was her words, and he couldn't refuse the tide.

The song itself was no help in maintaining distance. Oberyn had never heard it before. In fact he'd never heard anything like it.

 

The song wove the tale of a skinchanger - a warg - in the ancient days of song and story. The man had been a simple hunter, one of the smallfolk, but he'd been good and loyal and come when his lord rallied his men to fight. The Boltons flayed him, seeking his power, but his mind fled into that of the direwolf he hunted with, and he hunted yet again for those that had taken his love away.

 

The song followed him through blizzard and battle. He tore the throats from the men who stood between him and the trail of his wife, even as he forgot why he followed her scent, and lost all memories of who he had been to the wolf he'd become. The song ended jarringly and awfully at precisely the moment you expected the man to at last free his wife. Instead, he found only her flayed skin stretched outside the petty King's tent.

 

The song ended on a bittersweet note. The wife was dead, as was the man who'd slain them both, but as the hunter lived on in his wolf, his wife had also warged into a hawk. Neither knowing quite what they'd lost or who they were, they remained together but forever separate. With no other life open to them, the Hawk and the Wolf hunted forever on in the woods, haunting the lands around the Dreadfort forevermore.

 

Oberyn hadn't realized he'd clenched his eyes closed until he opened them. He was surprised to find his face wet until he heard Lady Jynessa taking a deep, steadying breath. The old battle axe hadn't cried, but her lips were pressed into a thin white line and her eyes were wet. Lady Myria was an entirely lost cost, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, she was so affected. Even Bran, who had to have heard his sister sing the song before, was sniffling.

 

"Your father should be  _ ashamed _ of himself!" Lady Myria huffed. "You've got a  _ Gods-given _ talent! How could anyone stifle that?"

 

"Indeed. I haven't been so moved by a song in twenty years." Lady Jynessa said with a soft huff of breath. Oberyn was too busy watching his wife blush to note the speculative sharpness that had touched her dark eyes. "Though, for the sake of an old woman's heart, perhaps the next song could be a little  _ lighter _ ?"

 

"Next…?" Lyarra was slowly turning the color of a ripe strawberry, Oberyn noted, as he felt his mood lift after the surprising catharsis of the mournful song.

 

It felt as if all of his griefs had been drawn to the surface like poison in an infected wound, then bled out. Oberyn knew the respite would be brief, but he was glad for it. Catching the blue eyes of the Parren girl, he saw surprise there and smirked at her. It wasn't hard to guess that she'd chosen the saddest song she knew in the hopes of discomfiting him. He winked at her and watched as she got flustered, fiddling with the perfectly tuned instrument as thought it needed an adjustment.

 

"Of course!" Lady Myria sniffled delicately into her handkerchief while little Arya took the handkerchief her brother gallantly offered her and blew her nose in it, loudly and wetly. Bran Stark let her keep the scrap of thoroughly soiled linen. "You must sing again, Princess!"

 

"Yes, if nothing else it shall get you out of lessons for a while." Lady Jynessa offered wryly and Oberyn sat back, stretching his legs out farther and slouching against the wall in order to get comfortable as he added his own voice.

 

"Indeed, I insist."

 

"If my husband insists, then I see no polite way to refuse." Lyarra's tone was pert and he smirked at it as he closed his eyes and settled in, pulling a stray quilt up over himself.

 

He drifted off somewhere along the third song. After that he knew no more. Later he would firmly deny that Lyarra had needed to stop singing not to save her voice, but because of the din he was making. Oberyn knew very well that he snored a  _ little _ for Ellaria had complained of it once or twice to tweak his pride, but he wasn't about to  _ admit _ it.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn's tent was spacious, but not grand. Its quality was apparent more in how waterproof it was than in any princely luxury. The furniture was polished, but compact, well-worn, and obviously made more with a military campaign in mind than a lady's comfort. Lyarra was surprised to find that she really enjoyed sharing a tent with her husband.

 

There really wasn't a lot to complain about. Oberyn liked all of his things in order, as Lyarra did, but he wasn't obsessive about it. Had his voice been less pleasant or he had less to say that was actually interesting, his habit of talking all the time would have annoyed her. Instead she found she liked his endless stream of stories, sallies, and exaggerations. It was a comfort not to be left alone, or pushed off to the side of things. Being the center of attention was horrible, of course, and Lyarra couldn't seem to adjust to it, but simply sharing her space with Oberyn wasn't the same.

 

Even his snoring wasn't really bothersome. He was relatively quiet. He stopped altogether if you got him to roll on his side. Unfortunately Lyarra was discovering that her husband preferred to sprawl on his back if he had a the space available and was comfortable enough. His simple, wide and comfortable bed was the only real indulgence in his tent, and it was no hardship to share it with him. Well, beyond his habit of putting his cold feet on her at odd times in the night, but Gwyn did the same. Lyarra had decided it was a Southron thing.

 

"I'm surprised with your talent for song that you do not have an instrument of your own." Her husband commented idly as he stirred the brazier that heated the tent, scowling down at it in aggravation when it didn't produce enough heat for his taste.

 

"I had a few harp lessons from the Septa, but father had me stop those when he said I could no longer sing in public." Lyarra admitted, and failed to keep the sadness or bitterness from her voice. "I'm sure Lady Stark convinced him to do it. Father had no reason to stop me other than that she was embarrassed…"

 

"She was embarrassed to see his bastard earning such praise." He scoffed, filling in what habit forbade Lyarra from saying aloud. "Lyarra, look at me."

 

She jerked her eyes up from the rough canvas 'floor' of the tent. She hadn't intentionally looked down at her feet. It was merely an ingrained habit whenever her father's wife was under discussion.

 

"When Lady Stark stopped your lessons you were naught but a Snow and she the Lord Paramount's lady wife." He spoke lowly and softly, walking over to stand so close to her that their breath met and mingled, but he didn't touch her. "I saw you stand up to her once as a Stark. Now you stand before me as mine own wife and a Martell, yes?"

 

"I am."

 

Lyarra swallowed, a mix of slow-blooming, fragile happiness flickering at his willingness to claim her under his own name along with the heavier grief of becoming a Stark only to have it snatched away so quickly.

 

"What are our words?"

 

"Unbowed," Lyarra licked her lips, the words themselves seeming to burn the moisture away. "Unbent, Unbroken."

 

" _ Yes _ ." The Viper hissed softly, like scales sliding over themselves and a whisper of danger, as a rough hand came up to cup her cheek. His hand was cold again now that he'd shucked his gloves. She automatically covered it with one of her own. "So do we bow to the haunter of a fish out of water, so insecure she attacks her weakest foe?"

 

" _ No _ ."

 

"When you think about her eyes on you, judging you, my darling?" His voice was low, soft and as dangerous as a the shadows beneath a rock. It could hold emptiness or death or salvation and you would never know until you were upon it. "I don't want you to look down from her eyes. I want you to look up for  _ mine _ ."

 

Lyarra had her hands fisted in the fur of his cloak and was pressing her lips messily against his before she knew what she was doing. Fortunately, she'd apparently kissed a man well-used to being grabbed and having a tongue thrust past his teeth. With a surprised and pleased noise echoed by the replacement of the low, burning background hum of his righteous anger with lust, her husband slipped his arms around her and dragged her against him.

 

At first the kiss was just that. A kiss that was all the slowly roughening drag of lips over each other, then the slide of tongues past teeth. Then one of his hands fisted in the hair at her nape, gently pulling at the curls as he bent her head back to drag his lips down the arch of her neck, making her gasp. Mirroring the gesture she twisted her own neck around, nudging his head to the side and following the line of his jaw and the day's worth of stubble that had grown there. It scraped her lips as she chased it with kisses and teeth to tug at his earlobe, earning a low groan.

 

It was that sound, that she was surprised to have wrung out of him while they were still nowhere near in bed, that jarred Lyarra out of the strange hot place inside her head that she'd gone. That wild, focused exhilaration and power was something Lyarra had only ever felt with a sword in her hand. Oberyn had brought her to the point of being a shaking, pleased wreck in bed and she'd been slowly growing used to the delight of it, but she felt suddenly shy at the pressure of him pushing his hips and the bulge of his arousal against her belly in a situation she'd incited.

 

"Ah." His unhappy hiss as she pulled back wrenched her gaze up to where his eyes were glittering jet black in the low, red light of the tent's brazier. " _ Lyarra… _ "

 

Then he leaned in for another kiss, and Lyarra melted into it. The roughness of his stubble and the slide of his tongue over hers was a delight. She slid her hands up to toy with the collar of his tunic, and her husband groaned into her mouth.

 

* * *

  
  


Oberyn could have thrown his arms up in frustration and howled like a wolf himself when he felt his wife begin to retreat back into her shell. That brief flash of passion, of that well of fire he'd been surprised to find in Lyarra, was fleeing back into whatever cavern in Lyarra's soul where she kept it. It was enough to make a man  _ insane _ .

 

When you put a tourney sword or live steel in his wife's hand she became the wild thing you'd expect a she-wolf to be. Not the blind, unthinking, spoiled whirlwind he would always think of her blasted aunt having been. Instead she was all contained skill and flash-fire talent. She would laugh and grin, her teeth a snarling flash of triumph as she jabbed and parried, striking out with surprising skill and the unbelievable, effortless speed of youth.

 

Oberyn delighted in sparring with her, as he'd honestly thoroughly enjoyed sparring with her brother. Had he not been a Marked man he would have made every effort to seduce the Young Wolf. Robb Stark was a talented swordsman, and Oberyn hadn't lain with a redhead in ages even before the Mark appeared on his wrist. Seeing if the boy could matched the honed focus and natural skill of his swordplay in bed would have been a joy.

 

He was trying to find the same with his wife. Training Lyarra to know her own body, and coaxing the girl into learning the ecstasies of the flesh was a task he was enjoying thoroughly. Even her shyness was sweet to experience in its own way, and he no more believed he would grow tired of it than the naturally quiet, thoughtful girl would ever truly abandon it.

 

The temptation in her innocence wasn't all that he wanted. Oberyn fiercely enjoyed teaching. His own talent was considerable and broad in life, and just as he'd worked hard to foster all of his skills he loved seeing the gifts of others' blossom. Watching as Lyarra flicked her sword from hand to hand in a trick he could counter but even a couple of his seasoned knights struggled with was an excitement all on its own. Just as had been working Robb Stark into a lather as his youth and strength couldn't quite keep up with Oberyn's experience and speed.

 

In another five years Oberyn wouldn't be able to count on victory if he challenged the Young Wolf. Stark would likely not gain much speed, if any, but Oberyn knew that even as fiercely as he kept himself fit, five-and-forty was a new challenge. Especially when facing a man not yet twenty. The same would be true for Lyarra, when she was no longer hampered by limited practice hours when the yard was mostly deserted and only having two willing sparring partners, neither of whom fully settled in their own skills. Oberyn was looking forward to the day his wife bested him in the yard; the triumph in her grey eyes would no doubt be fit for some warrior Goddess from the other side of the world.

 

The feel of her dragging him into a kiss and demanding he pay court to her passions for once had gone straight to his loins, however. In that moment Oberyn had happily chased her passion as it challenged and attempted to dominate his own. His mind had raced back to a dozen different lovers who'd pressed against him, tangling bodies and tongues together in a battle where everyone emerged the winner.

 

Oberyn was beginning to experience flashes of what he'd read having a soulmate was like. His wife's emotions weren't clear to him, however, save in vague flashes. Usually when something bothered or pleased her strongly. These windows of awareness opened and closed and Oberyn had yet to master any kind of control over them, as they were like grasping fog with pliers. It was  _ frustrating _ , especially as he began to realize that the girl he'd taken to wife was perceiving far more from him.

 

The only place he had no trouble finding that connection was bed. Oberyn had no complaints about that. It added a wonderful spice, and a fascinating newness to the act to truly share his lover's pleasure. He doubted it would ever grow stale as experiences went, and was some small consolation for knowing that - as long as the girl lived - he would never bed another.

 

Feeling Lyarra's passion awaken and break free from the flickering candle of her unease and the old shame he'd barely brushed the edges of had been like swallowing a full dose of Blood Nectar. Not that Oberyn  _ needed _ the infamous aphrodisiac, his young wife was a desirable woman. Feeling her suddenly want him so had taken him from the slow-growing, languid anticipation of a night of expected lovemaking to the hectic need of a being pushed and pulled through the inferno of a thorough fucking fast enough to steal his breath away.

 

Still… she was so damned young. How could he resent her shyness?  _ Easily _ , actually, but what would that get him? Oberyn knew women and as uncomfortable as it made him for his mind to make any use of the things he'd learned as a father to so many daughters, he found he couldn't help applying the knowledge. Lyarra was not yet five-and-ten, and he'd just seen his fortieth nameday. She had every right to be intimidated and he had no right to rush her into the kind of bedplay she might not be ready for.

 

So Oberyn stifled his impatience and curled his hands around her back to massage the muscles there as she rested in his arms and threatened to drive him mad toying with his collar. He'd already learned that she'd but shyly help him disrobe. There was yet time to get her to tear his clothing from him and press him down against their bed, as subject to her own storms and needs as he was to his own.

 

" _ Ah _ , Lyarra." He breathed and began pressing a delicate line of kisses up the sharp, straight bridge of her nose. "What would you have of your husband tonight?"

 

Just because he wasn't going to overwhelm her didn't mean he couldn't push a little. He could feel her blushing beneath his lips as he trailed them over one sharp cheekbone. He was reaching up to uncoil the loose knot at her nape, pulling the blue silk cord used to hold the mass of hair back as he spoke, and he gently combed his fingers through the untamed ringlets in the dark of the tent while he waited.

 

"You know what I want."

 

He could barely hear her and he smiled wryly into the dark. It really was his own fault. She'd never turned him away from her bed, but she'd been more adventurous their first time laying as man and wife than she had been since. She'd seen too much of her temper, and the delight of unexpected pleasure had faded behind a quiet, introspective nature and a lifetime of being stifled for her bastardy.

 

Now, though he'd begun to coax her into lovemaking nightly with the split goal of pleasure and quickening her, Oberyn found he'd lost ground. His wife was shyer nearly a moon into her marriage than she'd been on her wedding night. He blamed it on the fine display he'd been making of his temper in the weak northern sunlight, and resented a little that it was affecting his marriage when the fires burned low and the annoying and ever-present clouds blocked the stars.

 

"Yes, but there are so many  _ options _ ." He teased. "You must give me more guidance than that, darling. One needs information to make an informed choice."

 

Her breath huffed out against his chest, hot through his layers of clothing, and Oberyn marveled again at how warm she was. No matter how cold he got he always found his wife pleasantly heated. It was another reason, beyond the impropriety any Dornish mind would ascribe to soulmates not sharing a bed, to keep her close at night. She was an excellent bed-warmer in the literal sense.

 

"You're awful." Lyarra accused him.

 

"True." He wouldn't deny it, and he licked the shell of her ear experimentally while he said it. She squealed and tried to squirm away, which was how he found that nibbling her neck was fine, but that her ears were not sensitive in a sexual way.

 

"What do  _ you _ want?" She looked up at him again, her lips swollen from their kissing, though her lust had receded to a soft undercurrent of arousal. She had enough room to think of her actions, and to be curious.

 

Still, her question pleased him. Oberyn decided not to test how far he could stretch her comfort with him. With his back and hips aching lightly from days of riding in an unfamiliar, bulky northern saddle, he wanted the relief lovemaking would offer, but now that the eager, wonton flash of her own passions had receded to steady want he decided he didn't feel like grappling in bed, either. Surely he'd get used to the poorly designed, infernal thing in another few days of riding.

 

Oberyn answered her with a kiss and led her to bed.

 

* * *

 

Lord Eddard Stark, Warden of the North, Lord of Winterfell, sat and polished his family's Valyrian greatsword, Ice. The dark, gleaming surface of the weapon caught every red and orange ray of the slow-rising sun. Ned stubbornly buffed at a non-existent spot as he squinted down at the blade with bloodshot eyes.

 

Jory approached him, his expression suggesting utter seriousness but his eyes holding a hint of amusement. Ned shot the man a look that sent him in the opposite direction. Then he moved on to the other side of the long blade.

 

"I believe I can finally tell we are heading south, Lord Stark."

 

Restraining an irritated sigh, Ned turned politely to Lady Myria. The woman was closer to his age than she appeared, he had found out. Looking younger than you were appeared to be an infuriating trend amongst the Dornish. Either that, Ned thought sourly, or he'd aged beyond his years and was only now becoming aware of it. The fact was, however, that the woman was more than three-and-ten, but with her hair still night black and only the barest touches of lines around her dark eyes, Lady Myria was an attractive, voluptuous, desirable, and self-possessed woman.

 

Her knowing, dark eyes made him miss Cat that much more. His wife was all any man could have ever desired in bed, and more beautiful by half than any woman Ned had known. She was not, however, a dangerous temptress. Her charms were honest, sincere, and didn't give him a migraine or make him feel uncomfortable with sheer proximity.

 

Not that all of the Dornish party didn't make his teeth grind and his head throb. Where in all the strange Hells of the South had they gotten the opinion that he was a prude? He had fathered five children, and there might yet be more if the Gods were generous.

 

"We're close enough to the Neck now that the air is warmer." He agreed as pleasantly as he could. "Did you pass your night well in the Wheelhouse?"

 

"We did." Lady Myria's smile was less comely but more honest as she answered. "Your children are a delight, Lord Stark, especially your daughters. Lady Arya regaled the Lady Jynessa and I with more ghost tales from beyond the Wall."

 

"I hope you weren't burdened by her exuberance." Ned ventured a small smile at that as she voiced an immediate and firm denial.

 

If he could be relieved of one thing by the Gods' will being written as it was on Lyarra's wrist, it was Arya. The older she got, the more her Wolf's Blood showed and the more he worried for the battle of wills that took place daily between Cat and their youngest girl. He understood how essential it was for their daughter to learn how to be a lady. As a Lord Paramount's daughter he'd seen first hand how wildness could bring grief and tragedy down upon kingdoms if it ran through the female line. He also understood, however, that the natures of some people's souls couldn't be chained, and that in doing so, one courted disaster.

 

As much as he would worry for both his girls, in this case the fact that Dorne was such a different place was a boon. Even the Red Viper's reputation as a shameless seducer with eight bastard daughters to his name worked in Ned's favor, for each of the Sand Snakes was being raised to be a woman unlike any lady born north of the Red Mountains.

 

A man who would adopt his first daughter by telling her to choose between spears and tears would not stifle his daughter's love of the sword, or trammel her with embroidery. If Arya could live in Dorne and absorb enough of their ways, he knew her dowry fine enough and her lineage impeccable enough, to draw her a husband that would would value rather than crush her spirit. They'd even taken her direwolf's name as a sign; Nymeria had been their most beloved and mythic queen. The Viper had even named one of his own daughters after her.

 

In the background Gwyn slipped silently away from the fire. Ned was now used to the sight of her fluttering about. Her bright hair appeared and vanished, and Ned had learned not to be surprised when the girl turned up somewhere unexpected. She was nearly the first one awake every morning, joining the servants around the fire and organizing the mulling of small beer in the morning and the frying of meat and hotcakes over the fire. Having left that, she slipped into her other duties at the first opportunity.

 

In this case, Ned bid the Lady Myria goodbye as she walked over to speak to Ser Deziel and another of the Dornish party, and watched as the young blonde maid smoothed her hands over a simply made dark gray gown that had likely been a hand-me-down from his daughter. One, he noted with some disapproval, that she'd altered by putting a rather immodestly low, square neckline in. Then again, thanks to the Dornish, it seemed like all of the gowns the child and Lyarra wore grew progressively more alarming. Huffing out a breath, he turned back to attending Ice and his own foul temper until a warm, smug masculine voice greeted the fosterling Ned had given up.

 

"A  _ fine _ morning, is it not, Lady Gwyn? The Princess is ready for you to attend her."

 

Ned looked up as Gwyn offered an appropriately demure answer. He caught sight of the large bucket of water in her left hand and the steaming kettle hanging from a rag in the other. He ground his teeth as he reflected on why Lyarra needed the kind of thorough wash-up that called for warm water rather than the practical cold water ablutions Ned knew she'd performed on every hunting trip or short journey he'd ever taken her on.

 

"Ah, Lord Stark, polishing the family sword again, I see."

 

It's not as if he could remain ignorant of it.

 

" _ Must _ everything be crude, Prince Oberyn?" Ned gritted his teeth and asked, sheathing the sword and slinging it across his back as he stood.

 

"I don't know what you mean." The other man denied, but his dark eyes were all sharp resentment and malicious enjoyment as he continued his baiting. "Can a man not admire another man's weapon without being ill-thought of?"

 

Ned didn't grace that with an answer.

 

"If the rains holds off, we'll cross into the Neck by mid-afternoon. Once there your party must be careful to keep to the Kingsroad. The Neck is a dangerous place of quicksand and lizard-lions."

 

"We have swamps in Dorne, but I'll remind my people to be wary." A hint of the mockery vanished in curiosity. "I had no idea there were lizard-lions so far north. They grow to great size in some of our rivers."

 

"I know, I saw." Ned replied briefly. "Their heads are broader here, and their teeth more hidden, but they grow just as large."

 

Had it not been for Howland Reed's caution and good sense Ned could have either gotten to the Tower of Joy early enough to save his sister, or would have failed altogether by dying in the jaws of some beast. Near the entrance to the Prince's Pass, there'd been a small river that came and went with the ebb and flow of rains in the Reach. At the time it had been swollen against its tall banks, and Ned had thought they might simply push their horses to swim across. It had been Howland who'd noticed that the 'logs' in the river had been nothing of the sort.

 

"What do they do in winter?"

 

"Sleep." Ned grunted shortly, in no mood to speak to the man.

 

Watching the Viper twist his lean body to the side, cracking his spine and then rubbing at where his spine joined his hips at the small of his back did nothing to improve Ned's mood. He knew very well why the man's back was aching. It made him long to remove Ice from its scabbard and do the licentious,  _ shameless _ fiend some harm. It was folly though, as much as it burned him that a man he now knew was older than himself was his goodson. He was now kin. The Starks were not kinslayers.

 

Seeing the livid bite mark on the man's neck made it very tempting to break that solemn rule, however. The thing would have been hidden by the collar of his tunic, but the languid hedonist hadn't tied his collar. Instead it gaped open, showing the strangely hairless expanse of skin over his collarbone as he idly rubbed at the mark with a heavy-lidded, satisfied expression on his conceited, hateful face.

 

Ned knew the power of Lyarra's voice. His daughter's sweet, childish singing had been a delight to him when she was a little girl even if it was a painful reminder of her true parentage. Lyanna had been like Arya; she didn't sing, she caterwauled with enthusiasm. Prince Rhaegar had a voice that could dance between the tenor and baritone ranges, and wring tears from hardened warriors. Lyarra had inherited that gift, with a voice that could soar sweetly like a birds or resonate with the passionate thrum of echoes in the mountains. Ned's fear that someone would hear her and make treasonous connections with the truth was why he'd forbidden her to sing, though Cat and the rest of the castle believed he'd done it out of love for his wife.

 

Unfortunately Ned had found out that his quiet daughter… was not always quiet when she wasn't singing. Her voice was every bit as powerful when it was raised in unleashed pleasure and the fabric walls of the tents could in no way contain it. So far, every night of this blasted, unwanted journey south he'd had to listen to the ( _ thankfully _ ) indistinct, sensual rumble of Oberyn Martell's blasted pillow-whispers while Lyarra moaned out her pleasure at whatever it was the man was doing to Ned's previously innocent little girl.

 

He hadn't had a good night's sleep since he left Winterfell.

 

"My Lord?"

 

"Yes, Jory?" Ned turned around, glad that the damned Viper had wandered off to see to his own retinue.

 

"With all due respect, My Lord," Jory gave him a level and rather apologetic look. "You look a fright. Unless you want to meet revive the myths of the Others and their wights, mayhaps you could catch a nap with the ladies in the wheelhouse today?"

 

Ned shot his man a look that could have melted lead, but it was spoiled when he opened his mouth to speak and a jaw-cracking yawn emerged.

 

"Father?"

 

Ned turned around to see Lyarra looking at him with concern. Her own eyes were sleepy but bright, and her hair had been contained in the sort of loose braid, wound firmly with silk cord at the tail, that was the only kind her curls would permit to hold them. He was thankful for a full ten seconds that she was wearing a properly modest dress. Then his suspicions about the high collar arrived.

 

"Yes, Lya?" He was tired enough that he fell back on the nickname his sister had shared with her daughter, all unknowing.

 

Lyarra's bright smile at it was a reward for his exhaustion, however.

 

"Father, did you get enough sleep last night? Your eyes look awful." Her concern was more than a little embarrassing.

 

Ned would sooner cut his own tongue out with a soon than let her know  _ why _ . First, he couldn't possibly admit to what he heard aloud. He'd already made clear that if any of his men commented on it, that would be the last thing they ever found amusing. He'd only grudgingly admitted he was pleased that the Red Viper had done the same with his own people. Second, Ned was at least relieved that his daughter's marriage bed wasn't a place of humiliation or agony for her. He'd far rather she find joy there than misery.

 

By all the Old Gods and every Godswood ever planted, did he have to _hear_ _it_ , though?

 

"I'm afraid I'm too much an old married man to sleep well alone." He replied deprecatingly, and got a small, shy smile in return that warmed his heart for precisely as long as it took for his daughter to blush and reply.

 

"I think I can understand that, now."

 

Lyarra's coaxing aside, Ned refused any offer of rest or to go anywhere near the wheelhouse for the rest of the day. Not only wasn't it seemly for a man to ride in the thing, no matter how the Dornish acted, but he couldn't stand feeling like he was torn in two every time he looked at his daughter. On one hand, he'd always hoped he'd find her a husband who'd give her the love Ned had found with Cat. On the other?

 

Why the _fuck_ did it have to be the Gods-be-damned _Red_ _Viper_?

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief stop in the Neck follows Arya and Oberyn's necessary heart-to-heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Blessed New Year, Yay for Time Off Work, and all that Jazz! Have Monday's chapter early. :D

**Chapter Twelve – 297 A.C.**

 

Oberyn supposed that it had to happen eventually. Oberyn was a passionate man, and he was beginning to realize that underneath their cool surface, these Starks had fire as well. It was, after all, a great deal of fun to bait Lord Stark's temper. He'd just assumed that his first fight would be with his _wife_ , not her younger sister.

 

Firmly keeping a grip on both the young girl's arms he held Arya between himself and the teeth of the growling, lanky direwolf pup currently snarling at him. Turning, he issued a level command.

 

"Damien, put your sword down. Ser Deziel, your spear is unnecessary at the moment." Oberyn let the tone he used in command of men in the field mix liberally with his strongest fatherly voice. "Lady Arya, call off Nymeria immediately."

 

"She's not a _dog_ , she doesn't do what she's told like that!" Arya shot back, her face still twisted up in anger as she kicked at him.

 

"If you want her to be able to survive to adulthood, then she has to learn the difference between when you are in trouble and you are in danger." Oberyn was unsympathetic. "She is your responsibility. If you cannot manage her, she will not be safe in King's Landing, nor will you. If you cannot control her then will your wolf cannot come to Dorne. If that means you choose not to come to Dorne, then I and your sister will miss you. Choose now, while it is easier for your father to send you back to Winterfell."

 

Resistance bled out of the girl even if her anger didn't budge. Oberyn couldn't help but think of Obara in the way Arya Stark's eyes filled with furious tears that she refused to let fall. Not until Tyene's death had his eldest cried again in all of the years he'd known her. He'd never meant her to take it so literally when he'd told her to choose between the life of the spear and the defense of weeping.

 

Nymeria the wolf stopped snarling at a few soothing words from Arya, and a grudging order to lay down. It was obvious that the yellow eyes were resentful, however, as the growing gray beast lay down in the dirt and grass. They'd stopped for the day in the ruins of Moat Cailin, and their tents were pitched in either protection of the roofless great hall or the lower levels of several ruined towers. They were currently in an old sparring yard overgrown by weeds and small trees.

Oberyn had assumed his invitation to spar would have been favorably received by the younger Stark girl. She was impatient with her other lessons and would not enjoy being cooped up in the wheelhouse while her sister continued to study with Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria for most of the day. Oberyn himself was restless.

 

He'd already sparred with several of his own party and found himself tired, but still in need of something to occupy his mind. As such, he'd hoped to distract himself with teaching Arya. She was a gifted child, and so blindingly fast, that it took effort and skill to tame her wildness and talent into something she could use.

 

Instead he'd found the girl genuinely trying to do him an injury. Likewise, he'd had to contend with her toothy friend. The direwolf pups were growing, and while they hadn’t quite reached the size of a large hound yet they would likely have reached that by the time they made it to King's Landing. By the time they arrived in Dorne they'd be larger yet, and in another year's time Oberyn was curious indeed to see how they grew.

 

He was _not_ , however, in any hurry to be bitten by one of them. Especially when his apparent crime was taking Arya's tourney sword away, and remonstrating her for an unacceptable attitude for the sparring yard. He would admit it was a little unknightly to use the girl as a shield against her own companion, but he hadn't wanted to kick the wolf pup and that was his only other option besides allowing the knights of his party to do their duty. That option was clearly unacceptable.

 

"Now." Oberyn released one of Arya's arms and let the eight-year-old girl stand beside him while he still held her firmly by one elbow. "Come with me, Lady Arya."

 

"Are you going to tell Father?"

 

"From the moment your father signed the contract putting you in your sister's household disciplining your behavior ceased to be his prerogative." Oberyn replied, then explained further when he saw her confusion. "I have, perhaps, not explained what fostering means well enough. We shall amend that to start with."

 

Oberyn led Arya across the yard within the unkempt but high stone walls of the keep. Inside his head he was noting with one part of his mind that he should speak to Doran about this. If they were allied with the North than the Neck had to be secure. To fully secure it Moat Cailin could not stand a ruin. It would be expensive as seven Hells to repair, though.

 

Thinking on the debt the Crown owed House Stark and was highly unlikely to ever repay, he noted that he should write to Doran again soon. There were too many things piling up that he wanted to discuss with his brother, and too many things he needed to know that could not be entrusted to ravens. For one, Quentyn had left for Essos only days before Oberyn had sailed north. Everything they did from this point hinged on what they found out, if anything, about whether Daenerys Targaryen yet lived.

 

Eventually Oberyn sat upon the gap between two of the wall's crenelations. At his back a cold wind pushed stubbornly, making him glad that he'd taken the time to throw his cloak on when Damien offered it to him. Arya Stark stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her back to the inner crenellations of the wall walk, and an expression on her face that could have curdled milk. Nymeria had followed them up and was crouched in a sullen way twenty or so paces away from them. As the wolf pup was not trying to maul him, Oberyn ignored her.

 

"Jon Arryn cares for your father and the King as though they were his own sons." A bitter example, but a good one in that it got Arya's attention immediately. "Why?"

 

"Because he raised Father and King Robert like they were his sons."

 

Her mulish expression said everything about how stupid she thought the question.

 

"For years, yes, he did." Oberyn agreed. "As Lord Stark went to the Vale and became a ward in Lord Arryn's household, Arya, you have come into my household as if you were mine own daughter. As my foster-daughter, you are subject to me."

 

Arya watched him beadily and Oberyn went on.

 

"As such, it is my prerogative and my responsibility to see you trained, educated, rewarded, and punished as you need to become a Lady of which House Stark can be proud."

 

"Father _is_ proud of me."

 

"Lord Stark would be proud of his children if they ran through Winterfell naked, wearing a squash on their head, screaming, _'I am the pumpkin king'._ "

 

Arya started at him, then started giggling. Oberyn smirked back, crossed his own arms and waited. Nymeria the wolf even crept forward to sit at her person's feet. Oberyn was going to have to come up with something before they got to Sunpear or the name his daughter and the pup shared were going to cause confusion.

 

"Lyarra told you that story?" Arya finally asked, curious.

 

"Yes."

 

Oberyn had been more than amused to hear the tale of a bet that had occurred between young Lord Robb and Lord Theon Greyjoy when the boys had been younger. The then two-and-ten year old Robb Stark had made wager on some subject that Lyarra wouldn't clarify for him. The forfeit, however, had been to recreate an event that had apparently occurred in the Vale many years before when Ned Stark himself had lost a bet with the Usurper.

 

"That has no bearing on the Lady you grow into." Oberyn went on, speaking as a father and a Prince rather than the charming teller of tales and teacher of swordplay he'd been lately with the girl. It was a sad transition, but as soon as he accepted her into his household he knew he couldn't stay the fun and dashing goodbrother forever. "Sword or embroidery needle, it's of no moment. The weapons you wield in battles of blood and courtesy reflect on your family. It will shame _my_ House if I return you to _yours_ with no manners, nor will I suffer any disrespect. If you've something to say to me, say it."

 

"Gwyn and Lyarra know you've set the ladies on Gwyn and it's not right!" Arya exploded at him, glaring angrily. "I don't _care_ if Gwyn says she can take it and Lyarra thinks it's her job to handle it and it's some kind of test to see if she can be a Princess! You're supposed to be a knight and protect people who are scared, but you're just making Gwyn more scared."

 

That was not what Oberyn had expected to hear. He divided it up in his mind and debated which surprise to take on first. Should he mentally apologize to his uncle for having scoffed when Lord Gargalen told him his doubts that the velvet-glove-and-gauntlet approach would be effective? Or should Oberyn instead take on the idea that his wife thought he was testing her fitness to be a princess by setting her up as a guardian between two Dornish ladies he'd long respected and had actually trusted to prepare her for her role and her dearest friend?

 

"If Lyarra believes that this is a test, it is not one of my making." Oberyn answered honestly, balancing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. "I will not rule out that my brother, who I answer to as you answer to me, asked for such a test. Doran is more subtle than I and may have made that choice. If not, it could be that the ladies themselves want to see what their new Princess is made of. I cannot fault them for that, can you?"

 

"No, but it doesn't mean I don't want to stab them."

 

"I find myself glad that I didn't provide you a blade when I did your sister." Oberyn snorted, and firmly quashed any pity at the girl's martyred expression. Obviously she hadn't given the thought he'd progress her past a tourney sword much thought; she was too happy to have even blunted steel in her hand instead of a child's wooden practice blade. "Tomorrow's lesson will be when it is and is not appropriate to stab someone with something. I imagine it shall carry on for some days afterward given your enthusiasm for the subject."

 

Lady Arya offered him a sharp toothed grin at that. It matched the yawn that Nymeria gave as the direwolf pup settled down to lay comfortably on the worn, mossy stone of the deserted castle. Lady Arya wasn't done. Oberyn reflected that the unsure, worried tone of her voice was now far more dangerous to his resolve than Arya's willingness to fight. It was ever the danger he faced with his daughters as well; they were so much more difficult to punish when they looked like they needed a hug instead.

 

"What about Gwyn?"

 

"You said I am making her worse." Oberyn was entirely sure his wife would have let him know if that was the case. He was working damned hard to earn Lyarra's trust. That left one other option. "Is she hiding this from your sister?"

 

" _Yes_." Arya's relief was palpable as she tugged at one unravelling dark braid, the loose waves around her face having escaped and stuck to her forehead and lips. "I found her hiding in one of the old towers breathing into her cupped hands and shaking this morning. She woke me up when she had a nightmare and snuck out of bed. I don't want her to do that! Sometimes when she has to breath into her cupped hands, she faints!"

 

"What?" That put a frown on Oberyn's face as training he'd long ago had, but never had use for kicked in.

 

He recalled studying the signs of mental unrest while at the Citadel. Elia had been worried and wanted to know if there were any signs of madness that could be spotted in children. She was marrying the son of King Scab himself. While he'd found nothing to help ease his sister's mind, he'd learned a variety of things about different disorders of thought. Severe anxiety was the easiest to study as it often had roots in reality. Hallucinations and delusions or paranoia had been lines of study that had only left him feeling more like a lunatic than when he'd started the frustrating endeavor.

 

"She breathes really fast and gets the vapors."

 

"No, I heard that part." Oberyn stood up and shook his head. He didn't need to go over that for long; those signs were easy enough to fake, but it wasn't as if the Westerlands girl was faking them publicly. The likelihood of this being a smokescreen - something that Oberyn half-wanted to believe as it made just getting the information no longer seem like harming a frightened child - decreased. "She has nightmares and sneaks out of the wheelhouse in the dark?"

 

That was very much an immediate concern. He wanted something from the child. That much was true, and he was willing to put as much pressure as it took on her to get her to tell him what she knew of the Names his family was owed. He didn't want to break the girl.

 

Arya's words about being a knight crept back into his mind and Oberyn felt his temper strain against his conscience. _We do not hurt little girls in Dorne._ She was a young maiden in his wife's household. She was directly under his protection, and even in an armed camp made up of his people and Lord Stark's, there was no way it was safe for the girl to sneak out and go wandering.

 

"Gwyn can be very quiet." Arya grinned now, wild and bright and proud. "She's taught me how to. I traded lessons for reading Mother's mail."

 

Oberyn chuckled helplessly. Mayhap he'd leave Gwyn in King's Landing. The Spider could adopt her and then the eunuch could finally have a child of his own.

 

"Arya, do you know what she says during her nightmares?" Oberyn chanced, as it could give him something to work with. Ellaria had comforted him enough after his nightmares, and he'd seen Lyarra's face when he'd finally had one in a bed shared between them. He knew the names he called out; he was not a man prone to silence.

 

"Gwyn goes stiff as a board when she has bad dreams, and she doesn't make any noise." Arya made a face. "She just breathes really fast and twitches a little during the bad ones… Better than Rickon, though. He still wets the bed."

 

"I obviously chose the right wild little wolf to foster, then." Oberyn offered, getting a smile and forgiveness from the girl. "You're still getting punished."

 

And the smile turned back into a scowl.

 

"You should get punished too, then." She argued. "For - for not being a proper knight or prince! Aren't you supposed to save maidens?"

 

"I'm all but an expert on the subject." Oberyn replied archly, but even he couldn't stop the twinge of guilt from returning again.

 

Elia, he knew, would be glaring at him right along with Arya Stark. His sister was not his brother, to have endless patience. Elia was too kind to plot. She'd had her own frustrations with his impatient ways, though. She would council him to be kind to the child. To coax the truth from her through comfort, and to feel sorry for one so hurt by those who'd harmed them.

 

He'd never been as good as his sister any more than he'd ever be as subtle as Doran. His pride rebelled against the idea that the little girl standing opposite him was successfully taking him to task, however. His conscience rebelled against the unintended results of his actions. His intelligence told him, quite bluntly, that if the Parren girl was pushed until she broke then Lord Gargalen might well be proven right; she could either flee for the Lannisters themselves, or he could end up estranging his wife from himself when she realized how badly her friend was faring.

 

"So you'll tell Gwyn it's alright?" Arya asked hopefully, then added. "I mean, that she's _safe_. We all want her to tell you who… who did those things, if she knows. You know we do, don't you, Prince Oberyn?"

 

"Yes."

 

Oberyn managed to say, shortly, and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. It was hard to put his anger aside, but it helped to look down into the sharp face of this dark-haired girl. Looking at the blonde prettiness of Gwyn Parren's Lannister features just made it easier to think it was all as it should be. That the girl brought it on herself by being standing in the way of his sister's justice. His conscience knew that was wrong, but he'd had to bear the _hurt_ so long for his sister's suffering…

 

"Your father told me that I have more in common with Lady Gwyn than I know." Oberyn looked down at the young girl staring up at him. Like Gwyn Parren she often saw things she should not, though the eight-year-old was too young yet to understand most of it. "Have you any idea why?"

 

"No." Arya Stark looked surprised. "You're tall and you fight and you're not scared of anything. Gwyn's short and she's scared all the time. You're old, too."

 

"Yes, let's _never_ forget that last one." Oberyn huffed out a laugh.

 

Lady Arya had commented on the gap between his age and his wife frequently for the whole of his acquaintance with the girl. He was standing from his perch, ready to take her down and issue her punishment when she spoke again and Oberyn ended up having to release a breath slowly to deal with the flare of temper that came with her words.

 

"Maybe the same people that made her scared hurt your sister." Arya suggested, her face a mask of thought. "I mean, if they like hurting people who don't have anyone to protect them Gwyn would be a good target."

 

"And yet, now the Lady Gwyn has many people to protect her." Oberyn replied, brushing gravel and dust from his cloak. "Your sister, your father, myself - and a certain fierce young she-wolf, it seems. She has no need to be afraid. She is safe."

 

"Gwyn doesn't think anyone's really safe." Arya said after a moment, as if she was uneasy with the idea and wasn't sure what to believe.

 

It was on the tip of Oberyn's tongue to speak truth to the child. It was a bitter truth, and one he still railed against. After all, hadn't his inability to protect that which he held most dear been well-proven? Elia's murder, her children being massacred before her eyes, his uselessness in the face of disease taking his daughter and his love from him… Oberyn was old enough to recognize the truth of it and hate it. He found he could no more offer wisdom and caution to Arya in the face of that grim statement than he could have done for his daughters. Doran would have been more honest in his quiet, implacable way, but Oberyn's brother wasn't here to be the Prince the girl needed for this talk.

 

"The Lannisters have taught the girl unfortunate lessons." Oberyn forced a confident smirk onto his face and reached out to ruffle her hair. "As with all of their works, I shall have to see this undone, yes?"

 

Arya grinned at him.

 

"You're still banned from sparring for three days, and I shall be giving you poetry to memorize _and_ copy, Lady Arya. I expect your script to be perfect."

 

Nymeria fell in beside Arya and whined softly in commiseration as Oberyn walked the girl and her pup back down to the care of the other ladies.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra sat on a folding chair in the tent she shared with Oberyn and obediently held the bronze hand-mirror that Gwyn had handed her as Gwyn wrestled with her hair. They weren't going to Greywater Watch. For one, no-one but a Crannogman could find the place. They even said the castle moved. For another, it would have cost them time and boat travel that her husband and father weren't prepared to indulge in.

 

Instead, on a rare, broad patch of dry ground beside the Kingsroad, her father's bannerman was coming out to meet their party. Lyarra was more than a little nervous about this. Lord Howland Reed was one of her father's most loyal bannermen, and a good friend. He was also the man who'd stabbed Ser Arthur Dayne in the back to save Lord Eddard's life when Lyarra was no more than a newborn babe, or perhaps just before she was born. Lyarra had never been sure precisely when that was. Her nameday was celebrated on the day Lord Eddard Stark's party returned to Winterfell from the war rather than the day she came into the world.

 

"Lean forward." Gwyn ordered and Lyarra sighed and obeyed and her friend pushed the great heavy mass of her curls forward to flop over Lyarra's head.

 

It was warmer in the Neck than the rest of the North, and it was humid. Lyarra's hair had happily responded to this by becoming a frizzy rat's nest. While Lyarra would have been happy to stuff it all into a knot and not worry about it, Gwyn _wasn't_ having it. Instead Lyarra sat on the chair while Gwyn mercilessly took thin, warmed and sweetly scented oil to her hair along with a broad toothed comb to sort her curls out.

 

"I don't think Lord Reed's party cares if I look like Princess as long as I look like Eddard Stark's daughter." Lyarra tried to plead her case.

 

"You're not doing this for Lord Reed's party. Lord Reed would support you no matter what because he is your father's friend." Gwyn's voice was slurred as she passed the carved wooden comb to her mouth to hold while she worked the warmed oil into Gwyn's hair with her fingers. "We've ridden straight through on the King's Road. This is the first time that the people you actually have to impress are going to see you acting like their princess. You'll also have to do it while standing next to the Prince, and your husband can act like a Prince when he's falling flat on his ass."

 

"Thank you."

 

Gwyn didn't jump, for which Lyarra was thankful given that her friend's hands were all wound up in her hair. She did, however, freeze for a moment. When she started moving again Gwyn's hands were just barely trembling.

 

Lyarra reached up and moved some of her hair aside so that she could see where Oberyn had slipped into the tent. Absurdly, she felt embarrassed to be sitting on a stool in her smallclothes and stays in front of him. He'd certainly seen her in far less… though Lyarra realized that wasn't entirely accurate. Other than their first bath together things tended to be most conducted under the covers of their bed; Oberyn insisted that the cold have a negative effect on lovemaking, though he'd yet to explain what it was, and Lyarra still thought his definition of 'cold' was a little delicate.

 

"Truly, Lady Gwyn, you are _most_ _kind_." Oberyn observed cheerfully as he looked over and raised his eyebrows before nodding at where his armor was neatly laid out over the bed, along with the light woolen tunics, surcoat, and other things necessary for his own preparations.

 

"Ser Daemon was here before we were. As we kicked him out, I thought it only fair I prepare for you, my Prince." Lyarra explained with a small smile. "I hope I listened well enough?"

 

"You'll make a fine squire, if you ever tire of being a Princess."

 

"Bran will be heartbroken to hear he's so easily replaced."

 

Oberyn chuckled at her jape as he walked over to where Ghost was curled up, snoozing happily on top of a clothes chest.

 

Gwyn said nothing, as Lyarra had expected, and simply turned Lyarra's head back around so she could continue to work. Lyarra watched her husband scratch the pup around the ears. Ghost had really become fond of the man. The young she-wolf leaned into the touch, rather than snapping or merely tolerating it.

 

"You may be dismissed, Lady Gwyn, I shall play maid this evening." Oberyn went on, his tone light. "See to your own preparations. As I understand it, Lord Reed has an unbetrothed son."

 

"I've not the dowry for a Lord's son, Your Grace, but thank you for your kindness."

 

Lyarra winced at the tone to Gwyn's voice. The only adjective she could think to describe it was careful. Nothing else slipped out of her tone or expression, which was peaceful and blank. Lyarra tilted the mirror in her lap to watch her friend curtsey and slip out of the room.

 

"You know." Her husband's hands were in her hair before she could flip it over and stand, petting along the nape of her neck and making her shiver as he played with the curls there as he spoke with the conversational bloodthirstiness that she was starting to recognize as a unique trait her husband possessed. "I had honestly thought that I had reached the fullness of hatred when it came to the Lannisters. I believed the the world had no more to teach me of loathing. I've found out that I am wrong."

 

"Oberyn?" Lyarra flipped her hair over anyway, letting the mass of it hit her husband in the chest as she rose to stand and look at him, ignoring the long look he gave everything she wasn't wearing.

 

" _That_ is the child who would throw live spiders on a Lord Paramount's heir, and who went alone into a whorehouse to trade moon tea for information on damaging rumors about her foster family."

 

Lyarra understood and nodded, suddenly relieved as she realized precisely had the Viper hissing this evening.

 

"She's too scared to act like herself, but she still hears everything, and she still tells it to me." Lyarra sighed. "Did you know Lady Myria and Lady Jynessa have started to argue about whether the Daynes were lying and I really am Lady Ashara's daughter? They say interesting things when they think Arya and Gwyn are asleep in the wheelhouse. Oh, and Ser Daemon has drowned his sorrows over Mikken's obliviousness to his affections by hopping into bed with that tall guardsmen with the cauliflower ear."

 

"Yorin Greene." Oberyn mused with an expression that Lyarra decided was wistful. "Daemon has good taste. The man's insatiable."

 

"Have you bedded _everyone_ in your party?" Lyarra asked, suddenly irritable and embarrassed when her tone brought her husband's black eyes to look up at her speculatively.

 

Lyarra's views on bastardy were complex, as any bastard's were likely to be. They had evolved, however, with every new thing she learned and every new edition to her life. Lady Stark and her own negative experiences were strong. Gwyn's acceptance and the grim humor she showed at how often you ended up with an heir who looked quite like this or that dashing knight had left Lyarra a little more mobile in thought than she'd once been. As did Gwyn's strange tendency to accept anything that didn't do her harm fairly openly; how could Lyarra not be affected by it when it had won her such a steadfast friend?

 

Her Dornish husband and his people had brought their own influence. Oberyn unselfconsciously loved and bragged of all of the Sand Snakes. Lord Gargalen had raised his cousin's bastard son as his own until the boy had died of some wasting disease of the bones before Oberyn had even been born. Ser Deziel Dalt was as good and staunchly honorable a man and knight as Lyarra's own father, but his paramour was a very _male_ poet from the Summer Isles who'd once been a bed slave. He spoke fondly of passing on his title to his younger brother, as if was of no consequence that he would never marry and produce an heir.

 

So Lyarra truly wasn't _angry_ , she found to her surprise, that her husband had once bedded men as well as women - and many of both. It simply did not bother her so much as it might. The Marks on their wrists meant he couldn't betray her. Lyarra also could sense his frustration and found that the link that allowed that was enough to make her feel more understanding than annoyance at his situation. He hadn't asked for her anymore than she'd wanted him. The Gods had decided their lives without any input, and being locked into such a situation together was rather a bonding experience.

 

"Jealous?"

 

"No," Lyarra sighed at the caution hidden in his teasing tone. "But I'm quite tired of having half the men and women we're traveling with offering me advice on what you enjoy in bed, Husband. Lady Myria is too cultured to do it, and Ser Daemon too kind to risk that I should take it badly, but many others are _not_ and apparently _I know nothing_."

 

Oberyn looked torn between humor and grave offense. Lyarra let him gather her into his arms, but she stopped short of kissing him or leaning against him. Instead she balanced both hands on his chest and looked up at him with an expression she knew was likely a little bit sad and a little bit peevish.

 

"Mayhaps you knew little enough when I took you to wife, but you are far too talented a student for me to offer any complaints." He purred at her and she allowed him to tug her closer and draw a slow kiss across her lips. "As for my preferences? I am more than capable of expressing them, and I'll be having words over this with those who think otherwise."

 

"Would you like a list?"

 

"After dinner, perhaps."

 

"Which we must dress for."

 

"Unfortunately. Should we all attend in your current ensemble it would liven up the proceedings, don't you think?"

 

"You'd look terrible in this corset." Lyarra rolled her eyes, and then almost felt the little voice that sounded like Gwyn at her worst whispering the words that came out of her mouth in the next moment. "Though the lace smallclothes might be fetching."

 

Standing outside at guard, Ser Arron shook in place with silent laughter.

 

* * *

 

"Ned."

 

Lord Eddard Stark nearly jumped out of his skin as he relieved his bladder behind an ancient oak with great, serpentine roots that wandered down into the water near his feet.

 

"I checked for lizard-lions _before_ I started pissing, so don't start." Ned grumbled, returning himself to some state of presentability as he turned, feeling his lips turn up as years melted away at the amused huff of Howland Reed's laughter. "The feast went better than I expected."

 

"I didn't expect the Prince to accept my apology."

 

Lord Howland Reed's tone was warm with regret and appreciation and Ned had to admit that he felt the same. Introducing his unwanted goodson to his old friend was the second most nerve-wracking moment of the entire afternoon spent with the Crannogmen who'd come to join his party for a while. To his surprise, however, it had gone well.

 

Prince Oberyn Martell might have carried murder in his eyes when her first met Howland Reed, but the man's moods were always mercurial. Howland himself was… odd. Ned took it for granted that he was, for he'd known the man for so long and he'd never changed. Crannogmen were also a little closer to the Forest and its Children than any other families he knew of in the North, and there was an air about them that was hard to ignore if you were not the sort of fool who saw only appearances.

 

The Red Viper was many things, but he was not a fool. While Ned felt that nothing would reduce the Dornish loathing for his sister, and it worried him for good reason, the man had listened to Howland. There was no mention of the Knight of the Laughing Tree, but Howland Reed had told the tale of how Lyanna had saved him from a beating at the hand of some unworthy squires, and the friendship he'd felt for his Lord's daughter for that act.

 

He'd gone on to explain that he'd come to the war knowing nothing of men, nor of Southron knights, and only wished to settle Lady Lyanna's abduction and gain justice for his Lord and Lord's heir. He was saddened to know he'd stabbed a good man in the back and left his family to mourn. Lord Reed refused to regret saving his liege lord, but offered what apologies he could for being young and only seeing a lady abused where more might have been known and less grief felt by all.

 

Howland Reed wasn't forgiven in the end, but Ned couldn't blame the man for that. Some small peace was made, and that was enough. Ned just wished he didn't think that the man's choosing to accept Howland Reed's explanation of fury at a group of men he'd thought were guilty of the kidnapping and rape of Lyanna Stark wouldn't come back to haunt him as another lever to try and gain House Martell their Names. Ned's hands were tied by his oath, and he was growing to resent it more daily.

 

He'd resolved to speak to Robert of it in the capital. There was no reason not to. Robert's reign was less rather than more secure these days. House Martell's popularity with the smallfolk was intense. Some gesture towards Dorne might be politically expedient enough that Ned could get Jon Arryn on his side, and maybe _finally_ remind Robert of what Ned was sure he knew was the right thing to do.

 

"I didn't, either." Ned finally allowed, breathing out and smirking at his friend as he looked out over the still, black waters of the Neck as he leaned comfortably against the clean side of the tree he'd just made use of. "Brought all your antidotes with you anyway, didn't you?"

 

"Of course." The Lord of the Neck chuckled and then grinned his crooked grin out of the light brown beard as he looked up at his much taller friend. "Pity he's only reached the level of tolerating me. I would love to talk poisons with the man."

 

Ned chuckled. The Neck was famous for a lot of things. Ambush warfare and poisoning those who crossed it were amongst them. Had the two sides not spent the evening maintaining a tense if diplomatic peace there might have been much to discuss.

 

"Your children are well-grown, my Lord." Howland said formally after a few moments companionable silence, listening to the endless singing of the frogs and crickets that populated the swamps of the Neck. "You must be proud."

 

"As must you." Ned agreed, breathing out and thinking on what to say. "Meera's a fine girl."

 

"Pride of my heart." Howland offered a smile and breathed out. "She'll make Lord Bran a good wife."

 

Ned Stark opened his mouth. Then Ned Stark shut his mouth. Then, after a moment Ned Stark silently shook his head.

 

"How did you know?"

 

"My boy, Jojen, has dreams." Howland chuckled tiredly after a moment. "You were going to offer a betrothal, yes?"

 

"Aye, after the children have time to grow a bit. What does your daughter think of it? She didn't seem much taken with Bran at supper."

 

"She's young yet, and more interested in catching frogs and snakes and such than boys." Howland smiled. "Give her time, and give him time as well. You said at supper that he goes to his mother's uncle to squire in the Vale. We've never had a knight live in the Neck, mayhaps his armor will turn her head when the day comes."

 

"Mayhaps." Ned chuckled at the image. "The Blackfish is a practical man, so you needn't worry that I'd be sending your daughter a useless husband with unaffordable Southron ways… I'd be giving him Moat Cailin, so she'd be well provided for."

 

"She would, indeed. How do you plan to pay to rebuild it, and when would you start? That'll take _years_ , Ned."

 

Ned explained the Dornish custom of the bride price, and the food that would be flowing into the North. Without the careful balance of buying in, and then subsidizing winter food supplies for the smallfolk to the extent he'd been afraid he'd have to, House Stark could afford to begin work on rebuilding the massive, iconic stronghold.

 

"That won't cover the entire cost, not unless the Crown pays back its debt, but it'll make a start." Ned breathed out. "For the rest… I've a few ideas and Cat'll help me work it out. With the South so restless after the Plague, I want Moat Cailin ready to reinforce your people."

 

"We appreciate it." Howland said quietly, and breathed out a long, slow breath. "My son's had dreams of that, as well."

 

"Anything that makes sense?"

 

"Not a damned bit."

 

Ned snorted out a laugh at that and things descended into comfortable silence between himself, his friend, and the songs of the swamp again.

 

"So the Gods have seen fit to have the Dornish help rebuild Moat Cailin. The Gods are strange."

 

"They often are. " Ned swallowed, knowing what he couldn't afford to say aloud even here with even the limited potential of being overheard. "Lyarra's a Princess now."

 

"She's suited for it." Howland agreed. "The Gods don't bring together two bloodlines like the Princess' without a reason."

 

"Did your son… _see_ something?"

 

Ned's blood ran cold at the idea. He wasn't a superstitious man. He'd seen Howland do things during the war, however, that were strange and not easily explained. The Crannogman could hide all but in plain sight if given enough warning to do so. He had an uncanny way of spotting snakes, scorpions, and other threats. If his son was _truly_ having greendreams…

 

"No, this one was mine." Howland breathed out. "Before I went to Harrenhal. I told you about it, if you'll recall?"

 

" _Aye_ , when we broke the siege you told me what you dreamed of." Ned shivered, recalling his friend's tale of a dream about dragons in the sky and a winter that seemed endless. Given the Citadel's predictions of what was to come... Ned couldn't afford not to take precautions. "They're saying this will be a decade long winter, Howland."

 

"I got your raven with the figures on how much food the Dornish are sending, and how much more they're willing to trade honestly for. If that's so, nobody in the North will starve. I don't know about Winterfell, but we've been laying by for years. We've got a six year surplus. With the Dornish contribution and more trade besides no-one will starve."

 

"We've five fat years laid by now if you forget the Dornish, twice that if we're careful." Ned admitted with a deep breath. "I've put Robb on gaining the honest figures for all of the North while I'm gone. I need to know where every House and holdfast stands, and have a good census."

 

Talk turned to numbers and responsibility. The true bread and meat of being lord was figures and projections and careful mediation, after all. Ned knew he wasn't meant for it, and hadn't been born and raised to it as Brandon was, but he contented himself that he'd learned in a hard school how to handle his responsibilities. While he wanted to spare his children that grief, he'd seen in Robb's shock and hurt during the last few weeks that he'd miscalculated in some way.

 

He'd never meant to let his son think he was perfect; that was a fearful thing to imagine anyone thinking or building a life on. He'd made too many mistakes, he needed to let Robb see that and gain his own strength. Ned was hoping the list of things he'd left his heir to accomplish on his own would help him with that. Getting the winter supply figures was always a hassle, but he had confidence in his son's Northern blood and stolid practicality. Cat would be there to guide him in the politics of it as she'd been for Ned in all of the years of their marriage.

 

"I brought the chest."

 

Howland's next words had Ned swallowing past the lump in his throat.

 

"Now's _not_ the time." Ned replied. "Is it-?"

 

"Guarded on a boat past yonder." Howland pointed out past view amidst the moss-laden trees and the black water and Ned nodded.

 

"Take it back with you, Howland. I trust you… and I'll likely come to fetch it soon enough." Ned allowed and rested a hand on his friend's shoulders after Howland's next words sank in.

 

"I'm sorry about at dinner, Ned. You always said that when she was betrothed you'd tell her."

 

Ned winced as he recalled Howland telling his daughter that she was beautiful like her mother. He'd stopped him before he could go on and say she _looked_ _like_ her mother. Had he done that even the dullest sword in the armory would have been able to guess her origins.

 

"If it had been the Greatjon's boy I'd have already told her. I would have told them as well and known I had another layer of armor around Lyarra's life." Ned shook his head. "Now… After her first child's born, no sooner. Lyarra and I talked and we agreed to it. She trusts me at my word, and she's a good girl; dutiful and quiet."

 

"She gets that from her father."

 

Ned had no idea in that moment who this friend who knew the most closely guarded truth of his life meant, so he did the only thing he could do; he took it as a compliment for himself and not the damned Silver Prince. Then he changed the subject.

 

"Aye."

 

"Still headed to Riverrun to visit your goodfather?"

 

"I wish Cat was with me to smooth things over, but Lord Tully will understand why I wanted Robb to have the experience of ruling and the support of his mother."

 

"He'll also understand that you needed to show you trusted your Lady by leaving her with your Heir. Had you brought her with you it could be seen as you taking her home for judgement."

 

"Has everyone heard those damned rumors?" Ned asked in a sudden fit of temper. "Tell me, Howland, how long have you known?"

 

"Only a couple of moons, Ned. I was going to send you a raven, then I heard you were already heading south." Howland Reed shook his head. "I didn't credit them at first. If people were poaching weirwoods, the smallfolk would tear them limb from limb before any of us could get at their necks with a sword and proper justice."

 

"That's what I can't credit." Ned shook his head, scowling. "The rumors are coming from _where_? I've spoken to every crofter and hunter I've run across since we left Winterfell, and I've put all of my bannermen to doing a survey of their forests. So far my people have heard them, but nobody knows where they came from other than south. It will be a while before the surveys come in, but the hunters and woodsmen would be the first to notice any weirwoods dug up, and all I've spoken to know naught of any weirwood saplings being dug up."

 

"If the rumors start in the Riverlands, you may find your answers there, my Lord. I wish you luck, this is a blight on the honor of the North itself, and an insult to the Old Gods."

 

"Aye." Ned all but spat before shaking his head and rubbing a hand over his face. "Stay till morning so we can speak again, Howland. I'd best turn in."

 

"Given that you'll have to deal with the Crossing to get to Riverrun, aye, I'd say catching up on your sleep was a good idea." Howland chuckled and Ned shot him a dirty look.

 

"It's not the Crossing I find distasteful, it's the Lord of it."

 

* * *

 

Oberyn's back was killing him. His hips ached like someone had grabbed one in each hand and twisted. It felt as if he'd wrenched his legs out of socket then popped each back in place crooked. He was beginning to think that the North itself was out to get him, and the weather was its choice of weapon.

 

Days of riding in the bulky, uncomfortable northern saddle had done his back no favors. That was unpleasant, but nothing he couldn't bear. That morning, however, there had been a heavy frost and as they mounted to ride out, leaving the North and its blasted weather behind, it had taken one more parting shot at its least favorite prince.

 

Oberyn had slipped on a rock and fallen hard. His back had twisted at an awkward angle. Then his pride had kept him from saying anything of it. As his pride was both his worst and most constant ally, he'd stayed in the saddle all day, joking and racing with Arya and Bran more than once just to prove the fall had done him no harm.

 

Lowering himself gingerly onto the bed in his tent that night, Oberyn stifled a hiss of pain. From neck to tailbone he was in agony. He muttered to himself in two different languages to try and fully capture the purity of the pain he was in.

 

"You did your back when you fell this morning, _didn't_ you?"

 

"A proper wife wouldn't mock her husband's pain." Oberyn shot back, refusing to embarrass himself by trying - and failing - to turn and look at Lyarra.

 

She'd followed him into the tent, dismissing Gwyn and Ser Daemon's attempts to follow. He'd been grateful for that, because despite everything he and Daemon had done together, he didn't want to have to listen to a man who'd once been his squire or his lover laugh at his misery. Lyarra was alright; he could still reliably put her in a headlock and take her sword away in the sparring yard. How much longer he'd be able to do that he did not know; his wife's talents were progressing nicely on many fronts.

 

"Your wife is entirely proper, and she's not planning on mocking your pain." Lyarra replied with clear amusement. "In fact, you've got a wonderful wife who feels her genius is unappreciated at the moment."

 

"If my pain is what puts you in a playful mood, my melancholy little wolf, then I fear for our future together." Something licked his toes. "Is that Ghost or are you getting quite adventurous?"

 

"Ghost, and you're disgusting. You've been wearing boots all day, and excessively thick socks. When I pulled them off of you, they were so sweaty they _squelched_."

 

"If your weather were not so horrid, then I could wear sandals like a civilized person and neither of us would have to put up with my sweaty woolen socks." Oberyn said waspishly, then added more pleasantly. "Though I thank you for removing them."

 

He listened for a few moments, noting the sounds of Lyarra going through the small chest that held her toiletries and then moving close to the brazier. He had to nudge Ghost aside when she began to nibble, and found the task difficult to accomplish without moving his face from where he'd buried it in his crossed forearms and a pillow on the bed. He just didn't want to bend, and finally had to ask Lyarra to get her pet before he had no toes left.

 

Lyarra did so, and Oberyn couldn't help smiling into his arms as he listened to her fondly scold her direwolf. The fluffy little beast was growing on him. He couldn't help but be fascinated by the intelligence in the pup's red eyes, and how it seemed to follow Lyarra wherever she went in perfect silence. The little white she-wolf also seemed to have a greater understanding of language than was possible, for Oberyn had lately noticed how complicated some of the commands that the three pups who traveled with them understood were.

 

"What are you doing?" Oberyn asked after a few minutes, curious as to the noises.

 

"Well," Lyarra's tone was definitely playful now. "I had thought I would have at least a few years before I had to minister to my poor, aged husband, but since I was wrong-."

 

" _Aged?!"_ Oberyn tried to push himself up but stopped with another stifled hiss of pain as his back seized up all along its length and the muscles spasmed when he moved.

 

"Just stay down." Lyarra had the temerity to giggle at him, and he turned his head just enough to glare at her out of one eye when he saw she had a small, familiar bottle in her hand.

 

"Hair oil?"

 

"It's good for other things."

 

She smiled triumphantly at him and Oberyn felt a hint of surprised interest. He certainly knew that the thin, sweet smelling oil that many ladies used to soften their hair had multiple uses. He just hadn't expected _Lyarra_ to be aware of them. He wondered, briefly, which one of the guards he'd already corrected for their prurient _'advice'_ had told her. He also wondered if it would inhibit her apparently rapidly blossoming curiosity if he told her there was no way he could possibly do anything in bed other than lay there with his back in the shape it was in. Then again, dying of the agony that would come from attempted lovemaking might be preferable to admitting himself too pain-wracked to be capable of it…

 

"Here, lie still."

 

The bed dipped under her as she moved to sit beside him, and she tucked the bottle against her knee as she knelt next to him wearing only a shift. Oberyn had already discarded his own clothing, pulling a blanket up as far as his hips before giving up on moving any further and accepting the cool night air south of the Neck would just have to linger on his skin until his wife came to bed. Whatever he might have said after that was lost in a moan of pure and utter bliss that shocked Oberyn more than he would like to admit.

 

Lyarra Stark carved beautiful artwork out of hardwood for a hobby. As he lay there his young wife put the palms of both of her hands on either side of his spine and pushed the muscular joint of her hands and wrists deeply and smoothly up the entire expanse of his back from tailbone to neck. Several audible pops followed and Oberyn could feel the abused muscles clench and then release in a sudden wave of relief so intense he wasn't even aware of the sounds he started to make. She repeated the gesture twice, then began digging implacable fingers into the knotted, tormented muscles of his neck and shoulders.

 

 _Bliss_ , the Red Viper found out, was a wife with strong hands.

 

Meanwhile, outside the tent Ser Arron sighed and set his face in a firmly blank expression as the loud, appreciative, masculine noises continued. Ser Daemon looked as if it was taking all of his willpower not to turned around and peek inside. Lady Jynessa, despite her years, was seized by a giggle-fit as she herded Lady Arya and Lady Gwyn into the wheelhouse for the night and used all of her diplomatic skill not to answer Arya's question about what was wrong with her new goodbrother.

 

Ned Stark once again did not have a restful night.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crossing. 
> 
> Warnings: Lord Walder Frey being present in the same room as attractive young women. Oberyn Martell being himself.

**Chapter Thirteen – 297 A.C.**

 

The combination of a windy day, a freshly ploughed field, and a brief rain did no-one any favors on the last two leagues before reaching the Twins. Lyarra, however, knew she fared worse than others. The fine coating of road dust that all of those who'd been riding mounted had was exacerbated by the heavier dirt the wind had carried off of the field. The brief drizzle had turned that water into mud.

 

Lyarra's husband had hair short and straight enough that the brief shower had simply washed the dirt away. Oberyn looked every inch the Prince, and was no longer plagued by the ill-expression that being cold put on his face. The Red Viper wasn't willing to call the weather south of the Neck _warm_ , but he allowed that it wasn't cold. As such, he'd sat there upon his borrowed bay stallion in his copper scale mail, the unembellished scarlet leather surcoat he wore while riding, and his usual weapons. The long, wickedly sharp spear he carried while riding was particularly striking.

 

Lyarra's hair was too curly to give up anything it had caught easily. As such, the dust had turned to mud. She met the members of House Frey who came out to offer their party bread and salt with her hair dirty and stringy, her clothing roadstained, and a cloud of exhaustion that had descended on her for no good reason rendering her mood gray and bleak.

 

"I liked bolting rabbits with ferrets as a girl, but looking into the collective faces of House Frey is almost enough to turn me off weasels altogether."

 

The first words out of Gwyn's mouth were cutting, wry, and dark. They also immediately put a weary smile on Lyarra's face. They even earned a soft scoff of laughter from outside the screen where Ser Damien was acting as squire to Lyarra's husband. Whether it was the Sand or the Prince who had laughed, Lyarra couldn't say.

 

"You bolted rabbits?" Lyarra asked instead, intrigued by this little hint of Gwyn's clouded past showing through.

 

There was the briefest of pauses, but then her friend went on. Gwyn's nimble fingers made quick work of laces as she spoke. Lyarra stood still and grateful, letting her friend peel her clothing off. Gwyn had spent the day in the wheelhouse and had no need of the hot bath currently sitting in front of the fireplace in the suite in the River Tower that the Prince of Dorne and his wife had been offered.

 

"Yes. Father didn't have anyone landed who'd invite him hunting, but rabbits are a plague in the public fields around Lannisport. Anyone can hunt them who wishes."

 

"Your rabbit stew's really good."

 

Lyarra realized, suddenly, that she was starving. In fact, she was so hungry she was a little dizzy. That was probably why she was tired. Lyarra thought back and realized that all she'd eaten that day was an apple gotten from a villager they'd passed by who was selling them. She'd actually felt a little unwell all day. Not sick, merely like food was unappetizing.

 

" _All_ my cooking is really good." Gwyn's confidence in that skill was well-earned, but smug enough that Lyarra nudged her shoulder hard in response and got a quick grin from the blonde girl when she did so. "You should wear the red dress, and your circlet. If the Frey women want to be catty, that's fine, there's not a princess among them. Nor will there be with their faces. Not unless the Prince of Weasels comes courting."

 

"Shall he bring his intended a rabbit skin cloak?" Oberyn called from outside the screen and Gwyn's confidence fled, her expression going blank. Lyarra sighed and shook her head, her own briefly lifted mood failing.

 

"The Prince of Snakes brought me a forked tongue, so I wouldn't sneer at a warm cloak." Lyarra shot back.

 

"Ah, you shall hurt my feelings, darling. I had thought you enjoyed my forked tongue!"

 

Lyarra felt her face reddening and then Gwyn was on her toes, whispering in Lyarra's ear.

 

"I cannot help if you are only tolerable company when your mouth is full, my Prince!" Lyarra happily threw out the line she'd been fed. "Has no-one told you that it's the lady in the marriage who is supposed to chatter?"

 

The sound of laughter that followed was definitely Ser Daemon's. Gwyn helped Lyarra into the deep wooden tub. Before her friend could continue acting as maid and help her begin to scrub her hair Gwyn let out a squeak of surprise and quickly turned her back.

 

"Oberyn!"

 

Lyarra protested loudly as her husband walked back behind the wide screen that was supposed to designate the separation between where Lyarra was dressing and bathing and her husband's space in the suite. That thin veneer of respectability was nowhere near sturdy enough to hold back her husband's shamelessness. Oberyn had walked over naked and climbed into the tub next to Lyarra with no warning and no fanfare.

 

"Yes, darling?" He grinned at her and picked up the rag and bar of soap that Gwyn had already set on a small folding table by the tub. "I don't suppose you'd be so kind as to scrub your poor _aged_ husband's back."

 

"Oh, _fine_. Gwyn, you may go." She was off like a shot. "If you're staying than you've got to help me with my hair. Either that or get a knife and relieve me of most of the hassle of it."

 

" _Never_." Oberyn denied passionately, turning his back to her and passing her a second rag and the bar of soap as he began to wash the road dust away. "You've no appreciation for the gift you've been given. You've hair such as the Rhoynish Queens of Old must have once had."

 

"If Rhoynish Queens had Flint curls one wonders how far abroad the Mountain Clan's sons got. Not to mention the powers of observation owned by the Rhoynish Kings."

 

Oberyn chuckled at that.

 

"Lady Mormont claims that she has Flint curls, and there was a Mountain Clan girl at the wedding making eyes at your brother whose hair was curly as well." He argued, reaching back to tug a wet ringlet forward and toy with it over one of his shoulders. "Their hair isn't half so thick as yours, nor its curls so resilient. No, you've Rhoynish curls, Lyarra. I could never mistake them for anything else."

 

"How?"

 

Lyarra reclaimed her hair, shoving it behind her as she finished getting the sweat that accumulated on her husband's back off of him. She then turned and presented him with her own back when he tried to lean forward and wrap her in his arms. His response was to stretch his long legs out, bracketing her own and dragging her back against his chest with an arm around his waist.

 

"My mother had such curls." Oberyn told her, quietly, and buried his hands in her hair.

 

Lyarra didn't know what to say to that. Fortunately she was gifted with a husband who enjoyed the sound of his own voice. She was beginning to find his easy speech a comfort. It filled in the gaps left by her awkwardness nicely, and laid a silence on her mind that was no longer uneasy.

 

"Truly, the ladies at Sunspear will weep when they see my wife. I shall enjoy their jealous moaning, I think. They certainly spent long enough gossiping over my refusal to wed. Let them waste their spleen on the sight of the beauty the Gods gifted me with. Though we'll have to take care. Your skin is like milk, if you don't curdle in the sun, you'll surely burn."

 

"Do you think my mother's Dornish?" Lyarra couldn't resist asking in a longing tone as she leaned into the talented, long-fingered hands massaging her scalp. "And I don't burn in the sun. The glare off of the snow is as bad as off the sea but I've never burned once in my life."

 

"You've never experienced the sun in Dorne, either. As to your mother? It would make the most sense, though I know not how the timing would work." He frowned against her shoulder as he planted a kiss there. "If you're only just younger than your brother, you must have been conceived at nearly the same time. If that's the case, then where did he meet this Dornishwoman who fled home to birth you?"

 

"I've always wanted to think her a noblewoman, like Lady Dayne, but what noblewoman could he have met and bedded when newly wed to a Lord Paramount's daughter?" Lyarra allowed, her gray mood deepening. "Mayhaps Lady Stark is right. A camp follower would be most likely."

 

"A professional would have taken moon tea."

 

Lyarra hummed noncommittally and stared down into the water. It was growing murky. Her hair was trailing around her. The curls were transformed into wet tentacles floating through the water to grasp at her hips and trail in the water beside her husband's bent knees.

 

Suddenly Lyarra felt her lips turn up in thought. Her husband was a tall man, all long, wiry limbs and muscular in the lean way of the wickedly fast. Once, however, the confident prince had been a boy as Robb and Bran and even Rickon were. She couldn't help picturing what he'd been like and realized he'd likely have been skinny with knobby knees.

 

She shivered as his breath ghosted hot over the back of her neck, and he drew his hands up her front. One settled low over her belly to toy with the dip of her bellybutton. The other came up in that unselfconscious way he dealt with his lust and satisfying it. Lyarra shivered and leaned into the hand palming her breasts as he lazily rubbed his cock against the curve of her ass. He wasn't hard yet, but he was certainly getting there.

 

"Whatever you were thinking of that felt so sweet, it's a shame to keep it to yourself, Lyarra."

 

Lyarra let herself relax back against him and turned, ignoring her own blush to search for his lips and a kiss of her own making. She felt his delight when she did so. He definitely enjoyed boldness in others as much as himself.

 

"I was thinking that you were my age once." Lyarra confessed and then pulled back from the kiss to grin at him. "And Bran's age, too. Did you have knobby knees?"

 

He stared at her for a moment as if she was some strange creature he'd never seen before, and then Lyarra's husband burst out laughing. Shaking his head, his response made her grin sheepishly and nod in acknowledgement.

 

"Obviously the danger of a quiet wife; you never know what they'll say when they finally speak." His bemused humor was wry, and when he kissed her lips it was more fond than anything like the growing passion of earlier. "Yes, you strange creature. I had _horrendously_ knobby knees. Fortunately they sorted themselves out more than a score of years ago. Did you?"

 

"Arya and I look a lot alike."

 

"So that's a 'yes' most certainly?"

 

"Arya and I look a lot alike." Lyarra repeated and then reached forward to get the glass jar that Gwyn kept the mix of oil and gentle soap that she used on both their hair when it needed a better cleaning than a brush would give. "The water will grow cold."

 

"True." He took the jar from her and began to briskly and efficiently begin working up a lather in her excessive mane of hair. "Is that what's on your mind?"

 

"I'm starving." Lyarra confessed and her husband chuckled at her.

 

"As am I, though I think our plans for satisfaction were slightly different."

 

Lyarra did blush at that.

 

"Besides, let's not deny our gracious hosts their chance to shine." He scoffed, going on comfortably as she felt his interest flag a little as his mind engaged in other matters. "You will not forget today's lesson."

 

"No." Lyarra agreed, turning to look at him. "You think it's necessary?"

 

"Silver-stained utensils are always necessary in my household." The Red Viper grinned toothily. "You will find my daughters share many of my interests and enjoy experimenting."

 

Given that their lesson today had been identifying and avoiding poison present in food, Lyarra wasn't necessarily thrilled to hear that. Had she not already been intimidated by gaining a gaggle of gooddaughters older than she was, the idea that they liked to experiment with poisons in their own food would have done it. She couldn't help wondering if her determination to find common ground with the Sand Snakes would even be possible.

 

"Do not look so, Lyarra. Emetics and a few other gut-twisting things aside, my daughters do no-one harm that hasn't earned it, and you most certainly have not." Oberyn countered, dropping a kiss against her shoulder as he continued to scrub the dried mud from her hair. "Here, I would not be so sure. In King's Landing it will be more important yet."

 

"Best to establish the habit now then."

 

" _Quite_ , now stand up so I can wring this cloak of yours out."

 

Lyarra did so, and was pleased to stand in front of the fire drying both of their bodies while he concentrated on toweling the worst of the lingering dampness out of her hair.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn had allowed his young wife to exile him to the solar to dress for dinner with the shambling creature that was Lord Walder Frey and all of his various descendants. The man looked like one of the walking dead from Arya's fireside tales. Oberyn had seen bodies mummified by the desert's heat and sands that were a more appetizing sight. He anticipated no pleasure out of their stay at the Twins, and was pleased it would be brief. Had it not been for a matter of timing, and their arrival happening near nightfall, he'd have been happier to push forward and simply camp for the night. Riverrun was the only place that they planned to stop for any length of time on their journey.

 

"I don't know why the Gods like you half so well as they do." Ser Daemon Sand's soft accusation put a smirk on Oberyn's face that nearly took the sting out of his displeasure with the meddling of the Powers that Be in his life.

 

Lyarra's little Westerlands lady had scampered back into the room to serve as maid when he'd left it. He found that he could issue no complaints as to her work. Gwyn Parren might have been no more than a knighted guardsmen's daughter, but she knew how a princess ought to look.

 

"My Princess is ever a credit to House Martell." Oberyn agreed, dropping into a bow in front of Lyarra and laying a lingering kiss upon her fingers.

 

Lyarra was wearing a satin gown cut in an unfamiliar style. Red as a cardinal's breast, the gleaming material of the gown had been cut lower and more daringly than any gown he'd yet to see his wife wear. Undoubtedly assisted by a snug corset, her bosom welled up white against the square neckline. From there, the dress rose into two broad straps over each of her shoulders, and continued down, drawn tight to her hips like a second skin by lacing up the back. From there it swirled out into a full skirt, but Lyarra wore no layers of petticoat under it to hold it out, so it followed the line of her hips and long legs fairly naturally before swirling into a short train in the back.

 

Underneath her gown, she wore a shift of dark cream colored chiffon so thin it was like fog around her skin. The gown's 'sleeves' were two tubes folded around her upper and lower arms that were held in place by complicated laces. The golden ribbon gleamed, as did the wandering pattern of golden vines worked out in heavy, three dimensional stitching of hooked-needle embroidery. Little multi-colored stone beads had been worked into the embroidery as well, giving the gown more weight.

 

Lyarra's hair was drawn off of her face and back into a netting of knotted golden ribbon of the same sort that kept her red sleeves in place over her shift. The Parren girl had the sense to take into account the stubborn intractability of her mistress' hair, because she didn't even attempt to hold it in place with pins or combs. Instead the hairnet was held by a broad band of fabric that curled around her forehead and over the crown of her head before tying firmly at the back of her neck with ribbons.

 

A length of golden ribbon had been stretched across her brow from one side of the headdress to the other, and at its center hung the copper and gold sunburst-and-spear pendant from the chain circlet he'd given her. At her throat was another of his gifts; the three-tiered necklace of smooth, round amber beads. In the back of his mind he was less than pleased with the Lannister colors. Some orange trim here and there was needed for the gown. That said?

 

"Tonight, no-one who looks upon my wife could doubt she was born to be a Princess." He smiled crookedly. "I feel entirely upstaged."

 

"It will likely be good for you." Lyarra offered through a fierce blush and Oberyn grinned.

 

"Wise as well as beautiful. I am indeed blessed!"

 

Having successfully gotten the last word in, Oberyn mused on his own accuracy. He was not an ill-favored man by any means. He'd chosen to dress the part of a Prince as well, as he no longer had to largely rely on Northern clothing that was hastily bought and did not suit him in color or cut.

 

He'd pulled a pair of the high boots he favored over simple trousers. Into that he tucked a shirt of dark carmine silk. Open to the waist with no fastenings, he tucked it loosely beneath his belt. Against his chest rested a golden chain decorated with one of his wife's gifts to him; a pendant of dark wood. Carved in a rounded disk with a broad center opening, it had the rays of a sun stretching from the open center to the edges of the disk. According to Lyarra it was a charm worn by the Mountain Clans to ward off winter and warm one when it came.

 

Over it all he wore one of the long coats he favored. Dusky orange silk damask shot through with an interesting pattern in dark yellow, the color did suit him, and served to remind the social climbing Freys just who he was. Those who sat north of the Red Mountains might disdain Dorne for its differences, but Oberyn intended to flout and glory in them. In Dorne, they were _free_.

 

"Won't you be cold?" Lyarra asked, her hands coming up to brush over the open collar of his shirt.

 

Oberyn felt his lips turn up at the gesture. His wife was a shy thing in public. He longed for touch. To kiss, caress, to share his space with those he cared about meant much to him. While he was reluctant to go too far and disturb Lyarra, he was discovering that her hunger for acceptance equated to a starvation for touch in the girl. His young wife had yet to learn the boldness he yet enjoyed, but he was starting to appreciate the subtler flavor of how she was learning to express her feelings and desires. Like his slow-growing perceptions from his soulmate herself, this was a new flavor in a dish he'd long savored in life.

 

At the moment she was expressing her pleasure at his appearance in what was becoming a habitual fashion. Lyarra smoothed her hands over the front of his coat. She barely brushed her thumbs over the exposed strip of his chest, tapped his sword belt only with the tips of her nails, and then her hands were back at his collar. She straightened the silk, smoothing it against the tendons of his neck and the tip of one index finger settled in the dip of his collarbone. The completely chaste touch sent a frisson of want up his spine as without warning he could all but taste her desire behind it.

 

Oberyn spared a dark glare for Lady Jynessa when she cleared her throat. She, the Parren girl, and Lady Myria had all been in the hall outside his guest quarters. They had escorted Lady Lyarra there, to wait, and Oberyn had emerged with Ser Daemon at his heels to find his wife quite the vision of youthful beauty. Her dark hair and the pale softness of her skin contrasted with the colors of her gown like moonlight on the red dunes.

 

"Your presence warms me." He opted to reply simply, enjoying her blush and the smug flash of smile he got in return before she took his proffered arm and wiped her features clean to proper Northern stoicism. "Now, we've an entrance to make."

 

* * *

 

Stevron Frey had lived more than three score years as the eldest of his father's legion of sons. He wasn't unused to tense dinner situations. Despite features that many referred to by the insulting adjective of 'weaselly', Stevron wasn't a particularly nervous man. It was a good night to be nervous, however, wasn't it?

 

Under the excuse of an aging body and all of its woes, he'd taken a moment to leave the feast rapidly thrown together to welcome their 'guests'. Travellers would have been a better descriptor, but Lord Walder wasn't having it. Stevron didn't even blame his father; for all that Lord Walder Frey was mocked by so many, he hadn't lived as long as he had without being canny. When you had as many unmarried kin as they did and a Lord Paramount brought an unwed daughter and son through your lands, then by the Gods, you pretended that it was the most delightful visit ever.

 

Or, rather, you did if it wasn't an absolutely idiotic thing to do.

 

" _Well_?"

 

Black Walder greeted his grandfather's quiet, taut question with a wince and a glower. Stevron had no illusions about his second grandson's goodness, but at least he was quicker of wit than Edwyn. Stevron's son, Ryman, was a disappointment in every way. Ryman's eldest son was cold and aloof in a way that no man with so many alternate heirs breathing down his neck should have been. Family came first, of course, but Stevron also knew the value of caution. That was why he'd entrusted Black Walder with this task, for as little as his second grandson was often trustworthy, he knew that in this instance they'd see eye-to-eye.

 

"There's nothing we can do for it." Black Walder hissed back as they stood in a shaded alcove in the gallery above the seldom used sparring yard. "The ground's too spongy and the rain's too heavy right now to get out and even try and dig up the saplings. It would be like trying to suck glue through a straw with your asshole."

 

Stevron ran a hand nervously over his mostly bald head and the ring of long, lank gray hair that fell from it.

 

"Can they be hidden?"

 

"Aye, if we can keep the entire damned party both inside the castle and off the castle walls." His grandson spat over the railing. "That idiot, Merrett, cleared more ground and cut a bunch of sassafras saplings to splice and root the damned things. When he did it he took down the row of yew hedges that was blocking view of the nursery. The things are sticking out like pustules on a whore's cunt."

 

"Never having favored diseased whores, I'll take you at your word for it." Stevron groused, then shook his head. "Aenys' cleverness has run out. Where's Edmure Tully?"

 

"I've no damned idea. Last I heard he was riding north from Seaguard towards us, but if Lord Stark thinks the limp trout is coming to meet him then who the fuck knows when he'll show?"

 

"He cannot be far. Not if Stark got the news from that frog-eating nuisance, Reed, two days past."

 

Black Walder's already thin, angry face constricted into a darker expression yet and Stevron worried at his lower lip with his remaining teeth. He'd told his father that Aenys' scheme was too good to be true. His father, however, was enamored of any idea that would stick it to Hoster Tully. He'd never forgiven him for dubbing him the 'Late Lord Frey' and refusing any offer of marriage from House Frey.

 

Stevron had little use for Tully arrogance, but he knew that they hadn't the power to do anything about it at the moment. House Tully was too powerful, and the crown would support them even if Lysa Arryn was dead and humiliated. Hoster Tully hadn't yet been done in by whatever wasting disease was eating his guts, and as long as he lived, House Tully would leap at any chance to crush Stevron's own House and wrench the Twins from their cold, dead hands. If the shame surrounding Petyr Baelish's deathbed confession by raven of having deflowered both Tully's daughters had been amusing to hear bandied about, the bravery that shame had also given borne too many false confidence.

 

Why did it have to be weirwoods, Stevron wanted to know? It was one thing to make a tidy profit and pass the blame to an enemy house. They were hardly the only House to jump at that chance. It was another thing to play with anyone's faith. It mattered not if it was a true and decent one, like the Seven, or something barbaric like the Old Gods of the Forest. The smallfolk wanted to believe, and with the feeling of salvation the inoculation had brought with it, that belief was moving like wildfire.

 

Stevron had no intention of being burned to ash.

 

"Well, what're we to do?" Black Walder asked fiercely. "There could be an _accident_."

 

"And bring down the wrath of the Crown, Dorne, and the North upon us? Don't be any more of a fool than the Gods intended." Stevron breathed out. "Speak to me again after dinner. I've plans to make, but I need time to think."

 

Black Walder's scowl grew uglier, but he allowed it with a nod. At least he was respectful. The man might be bedding his brothers' wives, his cousin's wives, and a few cousins themselves but he was at least polite to his elders. Given the situation Stevron was willing to take his advantages where he could find them. He determined that he had to get back to the Great Hall and listen. If there was a way out of this mess, he'd find it, and if not, he was the only one in his whole blasted family with a diplomatic bone in their body. Cleaning up the mess would, again, undoubtedly fall to him.

 

* * *

 

It should have relieved Oberyn that his wife had one friend who was close to her age and with whom she could share her secrets that was actually equipped to deal with politics and the public. It did not. The raucous, rude crowd of Freys that filled the Great Hall of the eastern castle of the Twins was not at all to his wife's liking. Lyarra sat stiffly at his side. He found himself throwing an arm over her shoulder in an offer of both comfort and protection and was relieved when she leaned against him openly and slipped a hand up to rest against his chest. If it was from a sense of self-preservation rather than passion, he could accept that with wry pragmatism.

 

Lady Gwyn Parren was infinitely lower on the social ladder than a Martell Princess. Even the 'Lady' in front of her name was but a generous courtesy title. She was no lord's daughter, and having a great-grandfather who'd been one didn't amount to much when several generations of mediocre marriages stood between that relation and yourself. Her dowry was modest. She had few connections.

 

As soon as she'd entered the Hall Oberyn had watched the Westerlands girl undergo a transformation. The nervous child of the trip had vanished. Folded up and slipped away before the collective eyes of House Frey, Oberyn watched the girl wear her new skin out of the corner of his eyes and evaluated what he found.

 

The lady looked good, though altogether too young. The gown she was wearing was cut much the way that Lyarra's was, though its neck was lower yet and rounded. Despite coming from a place where the weather and custom dictated brief clothing, he wasn't sure he liked how much it put the girl on display. She was a maid of three-and-ten, and Oberyn was a father.

 

Her gown was not so fine as Lyarra's. It was made out of good-quality linen rather than silk. The cotton of her shift where it fluffed out around her shoulders and elbows was thin and gauzy, though, and the robin's egg blue of the gown made the lady's eyes glow like sapphires in the torchlight of the Hall. Lady Gwyn had also picked up a slight tan on the road, and it was burnished to a gold by the candlelight at the table. Braided in a crown around her head, the Parren girl's fair hair gleamed brighter than the chain of fat golden links that rested close around her throat. Oberyn was willing to bet that the choker had started life as the chain that held a knight's cloak closed across his throat.

 

"My son Emmon mentioned his wife had a girl in her care at Casterly Rock a couple of years ago with Lannister looks. The pussy-whipped idiot didn't mention she was better looking than his wife was before she got fat."

 

Lord Walder Frey's unstinting lechery was enough to offend even Oberyn. He hadn't chosen to wed a girl younger than some of his daughters. That was a decision taken out of his hands. Though he was rapidly growing fond of Lyarra that didn't mean he wouldn't have preferred for his life to remain as it had been with Ellaria by his side. At the head of the high table in a chair carved like a bridge and twin towers sat a wasted pustule of a man who'd somehow cheated the Stranger for far too long and was smacking his lips over empty gums for a child less than one sixth his age.

 

"Thank you for the compliment, Lord Frey."

 

Gwyn was perfectly polite and demure in the face of the lechery. Oberyn briefly began to do the actual logistics of poisoning the occupants of the Hall in his head. Quite apart from the withered ass at the head of the table, there were a plethora of other hungry and soulless eyes turned on the women of their party. He found himself relieved that Arya and Bran had both been deemed too young for the table.

 

To his dissatisfaction he could not say he thought back on how that had happened with equal pleasure. He should have been able to put aside any dislike for the Parren girl. Oberyn lived by his passions, but he had a mind. The Lannisters had left the blonde girl with her own scars and damage. Instead of focusing on that, however, the angle of her cheekbones and the sharpness of her chin kept pushing him towards anger even as his mind accepted that his best hopes for the Names he sought lay in gaining her trust.

 

"Good manners, too. I don't imagine Tywin Lannister tolerates cheek from the wards of his House." Frey went on and one of his grandson's guffawed loudly.

 

"I don't imagine the cold sod tolerates much of anything." The nameless, fat Frey in question wiped his greasy mouth on an already filthy napkin.

 

"Who's your ward's father, Lord Stark?" Lord Walder asked, his rheumy eyes speculative.

 

"Lady Gwyn is not a ward, she's a lady of my household."

 

Lyarra's voice was as tense as her spine as she sat in the curve of Oberyn's arm and he felt a flare of delight at the hints he was beginning to feel from her slow-growing temper beginning to kindle. His lady wore her passions quietly. She did not, however, live a life without them.

 

"Indeed?" Lord Walder flicked his eyes once over Lyarra, concentrating on her cleavage, then turned to look at Oberyn in a clear dismissal of Lyarra. "Looking to improve that desert scenery, eh?"

 

"Dorne is a land replete with beauty." Oberyn drawled.

 

Inside he shook hands with his sense of disgust. The Reach, Riverlands, Stormlands, and Crownlands sneered at Dorne. This was a man whose behavior they found a representation of a powerful lord and family patriarch, however? Pah!

 

"The Crossing has its own charms." Lord Walder replied, looking over at Lord Stark after holding Oberyn's black gaze for only the briefest moment before his cloudy gaze skittered away like a rat just realizing a hungry viper had spied it. "Doesn't it, Lord Stark? You've got a likely enough daughter back home, I hear. Takes after Lady Stark? Back when she was just Hoster's older daughter, she was a fine young thing to look at, I recall."

 

"I'm blessed in my family."

 

Ned Stark, Oberyn reflected with amusement, was never going to make a player in the Game of Thrones. The man had the subtlety of a brick to the head. The fact that he looked like he wanted to deliver death by beating to most of those sitting around them only improved it. For once Oberyn found himself in agreement with his goodfather.

 

"We all are, until we're not. Tell me, are either of your girls betrothed? The little one looked feisty enough. Is there a reason she's not at the meal?"

 

"The Lady Arya," Oberyn interrupted smoothly, letting his voice slither threateningly across the table, winding between tankards with venom implied in its smooth movement. "Is being fostered as part of mine own household. I did not deem it well for a child so young to sit up late after a long day's ride."

 

"Besides, someone had to mind the wolves." Lyarra drawled, her words immediately spoken in perfect accord and reinforcement.

 

"Aye, Bran and Arya are doing so."

 

"I'd always heard Direwolves were big. They are no larger than a hound." Black Walder Frey, the infamous great-grandson of the original, snorted in derision and his grandfather, Lord Stevron sent a harsh look down at where the man sat a little too close to one of his multitude of female cousins.

 

"They are slightly less than six moons old."

 

Lyarra's words brought a moment of surprised silence to the table and Oberyn sipped at his wine in amusement. It was a decent enough vintage for all that it was the sweet, bodiless rubbish from the Reach. Oberyn noted, however, that the Frey reputation for parsimoniousness was well-earned. Outside of the High Table, the Freys themselves were drinking swill. Even the ale being taken by their various guardsmen was watered and weak.

 

"How big are they to get, then?"

 

The thin, squeaky voice that asked was young and feminine. It was also a little annoying, but it was hardly the fault of its owner that she hadn't been gifted with a fine voice. Nor did Oberyn find the girl particularly offensive when compared to her other relatives; male or female.

 

He had no idea of the girl's name. She'd not been ranked worthy of an introduction amongst the ten or so favorites that the Lord of the Crossing had bothered to introduce. She a round, pink butterball of a girl. Of medium height with a massive bosom and limp yellow hair that could have likely been made more presentable with more frequent washing, the girl was wearing a pink gown poorly cut for her figure and overly decorated with recycle ribbon rosettes and second hand crocheted cotton lace. She had only a pair of little silver horseshoes piercing her ears to serve as jewelry.

 

Her eyes were a wide, pretty steel blue. They were clear and guileless. Despite sharing an age with Lyarra, she looked younger. Oberyn found it rather cute, in a childish way, how her eyes went wide and she bit her lip a little as she asked Lyarra about the direwolf pups. As she did so her eyes sketched over Lyarra's fine clothing and beautiful features, then skirted towards Gwyn's self-possessed carriage. The contrast between the heavy-set girl's obvious admiration of the two young ladies and the sneering, backhanded comments the other Frey women had made was obvious.

 

"Not as big as _you_ , Fat Walda!"

 

Oberyn identified the source of the raucous yell as being a skinny lad serving as a page. The girl, one of the many Waldas, turned as pink in the face as her reworked dress. She didn't look away, Oberyn noted, or lose her grip on the platter of fresh custard tarts in her hands; like many of the younger Freys, she served at the table as a servant would in a less populous house. Oberyn's attempt to speak was subverted by his usually quiet wife. He felt her flare of temper as she spoke.

 

"Mayhaps I will visit again when Ghost is full grown and you can judge for yourself." Lyarra replied in a low, dangerous voice that mixed perfect politeness with potential violence in a way that twigged Oberyn's memory. He ascribed it to Lord Stark, though he would later remember that the Quiet Wolf's temper flared in snarls and quick outbursts and not the low-burning fire he was witnessing now. "I'll make sure to bring her when she's hungry. Then I needn't worry about her sleeping through the introduction."

 

The boy froze, turned his eyes towards Oberyn's wife, and then looked at the Viper himself as if for help. Oberyn set his wine glass down and tightened the grip of the arm he'd left draped around his wife. He ran the tips of his fingers up and down over her sleeve, playing with the sheer material of her shift where they projected out of openings in the gown. Then, very deliberately, he smiled.

 

Unlike Fat Walda, the pimply lad didn't hold his composure enough to do his job. Minding his words and not his task, the lad didn't fare well. He'd been pouring ale and sloshed a great gout of it down the front of one of his uncles or great-uncle's tunics. The result was a rough cuff upside the head and a hail of harsh words about the boy's wits being addled.

 

"The mother was the size of an upland miner's pony." Lady Gwyn offered as well. "So, around sixty stone. Sixty-two at the outside?"

 

"That's the size of a sand steed!" Lady Myria had mostly fallen silent with disapproval of the company, but she perked up at that comment.

 

A beautiful, wealthy widow she'd ranked a spot at the high table as well, bracketing Gwyn as Oberyn bookended Lyarra. Lord Stark had taken up a seat at her other side to provide further insulation. The fact that Lady Myria hadn't used this to continue her fruitless attempts to seduce the man showed how much she appreciated the gesture.

 

"Mining ponies are sturdy beasts."

 

Oberyn's irritation at himself returned. Lady Gwyn's jest, redirecting attention away from where Oberyn's Princess was still glaring and giving off every appearance of well-restrained anger, was more than an intelligent move politically. It was funny in its false obtuseness. It was also genuinely brave. The girl was clearly willing to draw the greasy collective gaze of her hosts to keep them off of Lyarra, little though it mattered. Oberyn's wife was Marked, and he had no intention of having her go anywhere in the Twins without at least himself and preferably two guards. Ser Deziel could join Ser Arron on the morrow.

 

"As are Direwolves." Lyarra relaxed slightly, smiling crookedly at Gwyn.

 

"Such an _interesting_ pet for a Princess."

 

Lady Mariya Frey, nee Darry was a handsome woman with gray-streaked dark hair, a figure only slightly marred by childbearing, and an expression that suggested life had been a severe disappointment for her. The falsely-kind tone of voice said she was going to attempt to share her disappointment.

 

Lady Bellena, a woman of absolutely unremarkable features and middle years, lit up with her own weak-witted expression of cruel amusement. Oberyn prepared himself to deal with whatever pettiness followed, but a brief look from Lady Myria stopped him. Lyarra did have to learn to stand on her own two feet, and while far less ugly the court at Sunspear was also far more subtle and difficult than this great collection of Freys.

 

"Indeed," Lady Bellena cooed, "And so _young_. How are you coping, dear?"

 

As reminders of her natural-born status often did, this stung his wife. Oberyn didn't feel it through the bond they shared. His soulmate's expression froze, however, and he squeezed her with his arm and prepared to step in. Letting her work was one thing; letting a weak-chinned, flat-chested idiot such as the one in front of him insult his wife without fear of retribution was another.

 

"It's difficult at times, but I find the rewards more than worth it." Lyarra replied and Oberyn felt his lips turn up in surprise as she directly leaned in against his side. In appreciation of the hard-fought boldness he cupped a hand around her hip and openly stroked her curves.

 

"How _lovely_." Lady Mariya drawled, clearly implying it was not.

 

"I wouldn't have thought one of honorable House Tully would produce a daughter so inclined to teach her husband's bastard anything about being a lady, let alone a princess."

 

Oberyn took note of the next weasel's face to present itself and also that he made sure not to comment on Lord Stark's wife until the Quiet Wolf's attention was elsewhere. Stevron Frey had caught Eddard Stark up in a conversation. It served as the distraction this specimen of disgust took advantage of to try and curry favor with Lord Frey. Judging from his frown the old man didn't find favor with abject stupidity.

 

Oberyn just wondered how long the mob could restrain itself. At some point the full scope of Petyr Baelish's deathbed 'confessions' by raven were going to have to come to light. How it had gone a year plus without anyone north of the Neck seeming aware of it at all boggled him. Oberyn could only assume that Hoster Tully wouldn't say anything of the matter to his daughter, and Baelish had sent no letter to any Northern House or Lord.

 

"You know, I've always considered those who speak of bastardy often to be jealous." Gwyn chirped innocently into the silence, her dark blue eyes widening to pools of lapis.

 

"Really?"

 

Lord Walder spoke, his leer toothless and glinting with drool. Oberyn prepared to do something, for the old man was foul and he was getting tired to subjecting the ladies to his presence. His children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were largely no better. What stopped him was the flash of vindication that came across the back of his mind from his wife.

 

"Yes, after all, Lyarra was born a bastard. Others have had to work a _lifetime_ to achieve the title."

 

If the first half of her statement had been delivered with false sweetness, the cutdown was laid out with a sudden dose of frigid superiority. Oberyn found himself appreciating it intellectually, but his hackles raising at the sound of it. The tone had been pure Lannister.

 

"Charming." Lord Frey's mirth and his lechery both faded quickly into narrow-eyed displeasure. "Tell me, girl, what was it Lady Genna used to call the Lannisport branch of her family?"

 

"Lannisport trash, my Lord." Gwyn replied with a small smile, her chin held up proudly despite her hands still remaining well-hidden.

 

 _"Lady Gwyn_." Lord Stark had returned to the main conversation, and his expression was chiding and disappointed before he turned towards Oberyn. "I think the ladies are likely overtired from a long day of travel."

 

Oberyn took the excuse for the offer it was and rose from his chair, lifting Lyarra with a hand underneath her elbow as he did so.

 

"Indeed, and I for one know I am grateful for the fine bed I've been granted and eager to make use of it." Oberyn bowed as briefly as possible. "Thank you for the hospitality of your house, Lord Walder, it is precisely as described."

 

* * *

 

"You'd think the plague would have been less kind to such a group of… I'm too tired to think of a name horrible enough. I thought they were hit hard?" Lyarra muttered as she released her hair from the netting and ran her fingers through the curls. "Could you pass me - oh, my thanks."

 

Her husband had passed her the tube of silk that she wrapped her hair in at night, and Lyarra began to tame her hair enough to get it situated and the ribbons drawn around the protective sleeve. It would keep her now-dry hair from turning into a massive rat's nest as she slept. The fact that Oberyn willingly passed it to her was a surprise.

 

"House Frey was badly hurt by the plague. This is only half the numbers it once possessed. As for your hair? Much as I love it, it keeps trying to strangle me in my sleep."

 

"Gwyn says the same thing."

 

"How is the girl?"

 

Lyarra thought about how to answer as she watched her husband strip and fold his finery away. Her own dress was already taken care of. Gwyn and she had, as they often did, assisted each other in undressing for the night. Now Lyarra was wearing only a sleeping shift she knew her husband would soon deprive her of, and Gwyn was wearing the same. While Lyarra had her own bedchamber, however, Gwyn was sleeping on a pallet in Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria's shared room. Bran and Arya were on pallets in her father's room, though Lyarra thought with a little pang that they'd all be piled in with father like puppies in the morning, likely with Bran's unnamed wolf and Nymeria at their feet. Ser Arron and Ser Deziel were both sleeping on pallets in Oberyn's guest solar as it stood between their suite and the hallway. Yet more guards, both Northern and Dornish, stood about on tight watches.

 

"She put some fairly bad scratches on her hands forcing herself to be still and seem unafraid, but Gwyn's alright." Lyarra answered his question. "You've been kind to her lately, thank you."

 

"Harrassing a child is below me." Oberyn snorted and shocked Lyarra by sliding into a pair of loose drawstring silk pants she hadn't seen before. "What?"

 

"I've never known you to wear clothing to bed."

 

"If I've need to put spear or sword to someone unexpectedly I don't intend to do it naked."

 

"But we've shared guest right." Lyarra protested. "The Freys wouldn't do anything. They _couldn't_."

 

"Something is strange here." Oberyn said quietly and Lyarra wrinkled her nose.

 

"Other than the ninety-year-old lech licking his lips at Gwyn and staring at my breasts, you mean?"

 

"Shall I do something about that for you, then?"

 

Oberyn's low purr was full of violence and death and Lyarra shivered. She almost wished it was from shock at knowing just how and what he might do; since they'd reached the Neck, with its lusher plantlife, Oberyn had been pointing out medicinal herbs to them. Almost all, Lyarra found, could be poisonous if applied in the right manner and in the right quantity.

 

"No." Lyarra shook her head and crawled into the covers of the bed, grateful for the familiar sheets as he followed her. Idly she played with the ties of his pants lying against his belly as she settled into her customary place, resting her head against his shoulder as she curled against his side while Oberyn sprawled on his back.

 

"Does my state of dress displease you?"

 

"No, does mine?"

 

"Terribly." He dropped a kiss into her hair, then went on in disgust. "After that meal, however, I find all of my appetites depressed. I noticed you ate little, yourself."

 

"Once I smelled the food, I felt nauseous." Lyarra replied, pressing her nose into his warm, spicy skin and inhaling as she felt herself drifting closer to sleep. Oberyn was a good bedmate, even if his toes were freezing.

 

"I blame the company."

 

Lyarra fell asleep before she could share her agreement.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freys Plot, other Freys plot against those Freys, Oberyn gets frisky, Ned has had enough of being polite to Oberyn all the time and is also a sneaky dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: references to consensual sex, references to Freys being icky, a thunderstorm.

**Chapter Fourteen – 297 A.C.**

 

Lyarra wasn't really comfortable with her husband's very public displays of affection and passion. She was a private person, and she hadn't been raised to the tune of passionate kisses or caresses happening in public. Her father and Lady Stark clearly  _ loved _ one another, but they were not given to such displays. Nor, in truth, could she recall ever seeing anything quite like it. Even Theon's whores kept their business behind closed doors in Wintertown.

 

Princess Lyarra Martell, however, was outright  _ praying _ for her husband to show up and be inappropriate. She would even take a repeat of their fourth night on the road where, after a particularly energetic spar where he'd done something totally inappropriate to distract her, Oberyn had thrown her over one of his shoulders and carried her back to their tent. Lyarra hadn't forgotten how embarrassing that was. It wasn't as if she'd rewarded him for such awful behavior! She'd slept in the wheelhouse that night once she was done letting him know just how little she liked such tactics, but she was more than willing to offer him anything he wanted in the way of bedroom favors if it would get her out of the situation she now found herself in.

 

"Your Grace, I truly must know what you think of the fashion in the capital right now."

 

What Lyarra thought looked like a small hall that could comfortably seat around fifty had been set aside for those few times that the ladies of House Frey were forced to all gather in one place. Meal times were, of course, a function of the Great Hall. Other gatherings were relegated to the 'Green Solar', though the space wasn't comfortable enough to merit the title.

 

The eastern castle's Green Solar was, as Lyarra first surmised, a small hall. It was a bare room with flagged floors and a line of windows along one wall. The windows were narrow, which Lyarra presumed was a measure to prevent the mass of women unfortunate enough to be bound to a Frey in marriage from literally leaping into the Stranger’s arms. Likewise, the walls were paneled, but it was done in a cheap species of knotty pine with narrow boards long stained by smoke and little helped by the thorough scrubbing they'd been given.

 

The furniture was also blessedly uncomfortable. Not in the way she'd assumed she'd find in southron castles; tiny, elegant things that were all decoration and no function. No, instead Lyarra had to endure furniture that was obviously cast-off from various men of the family. These over-tall chairs had been poorly hewn down to lower heights and were unbalanced as a result. Likewise, they had been reupholstered in green as if to give the room some theme or unity, but it had been done with low quality fabric and too little padding. So far both the sofa she'd first sat on and the chair she'd chosen later had been horrendously uncomfortable on her rear and back.

 

"I'm afraid I'm little informed in matters of southron fashion." Lyarra heard her own stiffness and saw Lady Jynessa's lips thin slightly.

 

She felt a little guilty, because the ladies had been working so hard to help her gain fluency and some sort of social grace. She knew her manners were fine, and she'd been praised on her developing courtesies. Lyarra simply found the Freys so distasteful that she was having trouble applying it.

 

"The Princess is the most modest woman of my acquaintance and gives little praise to her skills." Lady Myria filled in smoothly, smiling at Lyarra over the rim of her teacup. "She's a skilled artist, and a singer of exceptional quality."

 

"Indeed?"

 

"Truly?"

 

"Really?"

 

"How  _ impressive _ that you managed all of that at Winterfell." Lady Nora offered with thinly hidden contempt. "I had never heard much of arts in the North."

 

"The North tends to keep to itself," Lyarra replied.

 

Gwyn, who'd been relegated to a corner beside the poor girl that everyone called Fat Walda and a pretty young brunette with very pale skin and large cautious brown eyes that reminded Lyarra of a fawn, chose that moment to interject in a ringing tone.

 

"Fortunately, it is not a habit Lord Stark insisted on, else we’d have been deprived a great deal of  _ delightful _ company." Gwyn called out, her tone innocently questioning. "Isn't it true that, while Lord Tully took several fortnights to return Ser Brynden's letter about the inoculation, he also sent letters to other houses in the Riverlands? If I recall it was Lord Frey who sent to Lord Stark asking if there were any appropriate goats to be bought from the North's Mountain Clans."

 

"Yes!" Fat Walda's enthusiasm was instant and she bubbled appropriately. "Grandfather heard of the inoculation, but nobody yet knew how to contact the Mountain Clans in the Vale without getting murdered, well, except for that one nice fellow who brought the goats down to begin with. Anyway, Grandfather-Lord Walder thought that if one mountain clan knew it, others might, so he wrote north and we were some of the first to get the inoculations."

 

"Not fast enough." Another lady muttered and Lyarra noticed she was dressed in a gown dyed unevenly from blue to back, with her hair hacked short underneath a severe black wimple. "We lost a lot here at the Crossing."

 

A murmur followed and Lyarra felt a moment's guilt for her foul mood. She'd spent the last two hours trapped amidst poisonous small talk with the Frey women. It was a situation that led her to discover she hadn't made nearly the progress she'd earlier thought when only working with her Dornish instructors in a Princess' duties. It had also led her to being insanely grateful that she'd only had Lady Stark to contend with growing up. The Frey women were constantly jockeying for position against one another, and Lyarra didn't know how anyone could keep a grip on their sanity amidst all the verbal baiting and backstabbing going on.

 

"I'm sorry for your loss, and that we could not help you sooner." Lyarra meant every word and didn't even realize how powerfully that translated into her expression or her voice; as it was, the grieving widow and a few mothers around the room who wore black armbands or had cropped hair looked at her with a little less hostility. "We'd only just started to get reports of the disease appearing at White Harbor, and Lord Reed had closed the Neck. When Father rode to speak to the Wull he found out that our clans simply assumed that everyone knew of the inoculation and the treatment. They have so little contact, you understand, they believe everyone knows what they know."

 

"I suppose even savages have their uses."

 

Lyarra caught Lady Jynessa's eye right before her temper flared and she snapped at the older woman who'd spoken those bitter, mocking words. Instead she smiled slowly and took a sip of her tea. Then she caught and held the woman's stare until she looked away and an awkward lull had fallen over the conversation.

 

"Indeed, they're essential when it comes time for something savage to be done." Lyarra drawled, imagining how her husband would say it, or Gwyn at her worst.

 

Her tone came out differently, however, for Lyarra wasn't given to drawls. Nor was she very good at the kind of practiced, superior mockery that Gwyn engaged in so easily. Instead her voice was quiet and soft. Her tone lilted over the words as if asking a question to which only she knew the answer. A question over which everyone else would have to wonder and worry.

 

The elderly Frey woman looked down into her tea and several others averted their faces. More still, Lyarra noted, either flushed or grew pale. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Gwyn smirking into her embroidery. Lady Jynessa's dark eyes merely looked satisfied. Lyarra decided she'd struck just the right note.

 

"Still,  _ fashion _ ." A younger lady blurted out. "In King's Landing."

 

"Aye," Lyarra sipped her own tea. "You'll have to describe it to me. Do you get much in the way of letters from the capital?"

 

"Not so many as we used to." The girl next to Gwyn's other side – Roslin, Lyarra thought – shook her head. "Father had a friend in King's Landing who died of the plague and sends no more letters."

 

"His name was Lord Baelish, and he fostered at Riverrun with Lady Stark's family. Perhaps you've heard of him?" Walda asked in her hopeful, squeaky way and Lyarra snapped her eyes up to a gilt-edged mirror that hung upon the wall behind Gwyn's head when she saw her friend's blue eyes focus sharply across the room.

 

Gwyn did not look up from her embroidery without meaning. For one, her needle was hooked. Stabbing yourself with a hooked needle is a lot worse than the usual pokes and jabs that come with embroidery. For another, Gwyn generally preferred to become part of the background in rooms filled with unfamiliar people. So if her friend was looking at something closely, it must be worth looking at.

 

Two of the middle-aged ladies in the room were glaring daggers at the heavy-set girl in her bright, but reworked, green gown. In fact, their scowls were downright murderous. Lyarra wasn't an adept at sneaky things like Gwyn was, but she understood that a basic tenant of politics was getting people to say things they shouldn't. To do that, Lyarra knew she had to keep people talking. Lady Jynessa had spent hours trying to cultivate some skill in small talk with her unusually quiet and withdrawn pupil.

 

Now Lyarra deliberately smiled at where Walda was biting her lip, then stood from her seat. Moving gracefully across the room, she caught Gwyn's eye. Gwyn neatly stood up from her place, letting Lyarra sit between Lady Roslin Frey and Lady Walda Frey (who Lyarra decided needed a new nickname immediately). Lady Jynessa had already smoothly slid over to sit by a Frey Matron who was hard of hearing, but seemed inclined to chatter happily if only someone would sit directly in front of her where she could but see their lips. Likewise, Lady Myria made her own move, this time following Lyarra.

 

When Lyarra stood up, she caused a general nervous reshuffling of the ladies. When it was over, new groups had been formed. There were clusters of conversation where different women were talking of different subjects with different quarters of the room falling under the purview of whichever lady was highest ranking in the area.

 

Lyarra hoped it was the right to decision to leave the Freys to sort themselves out in most of the space. Lady Jynessa would surely inform her later if she'd made a blunder. At that moment Lyarra wanted to concentrate on the two lowest ranking ladies. She knew not why Lady Roslin was unpopular with the other ladies; she was certainly the prettiest maid amongst the daughters and granddaughters of Old Lord Weasel. She'd been sent over to sit by Gwyn, who the household seemed to hypocritically want to pick on because she was several generations removed from a House Seat just as most of them were. Why a girl mocked as 'Fat' Walda was sent to the corner of shame, Lyarra didn't have to ask. Both, Lyarra fancied, would have little reason not to talk.

 

"Roslin, come help your grandmother with her sewing. Her eyes aren't what they once were."

 

The petulant, quavering voice of a woman who was no more than fifty-five, but whose body had been utterly wrecked by childbirth, called out to one of Lyarra's targets even as Gwyn resettled herself on a footstool and Lady Myria pulled Roslin's vacated chair around so her tall, buxom form blocked Walda's view of the room. Lyarra sat down where Gwyn had sat and smiled at Walda.

 

The girl smiled back, as though she was shocked that anyone would smile at her at all and Lyarra felt her heart go out to the other girl. Their reasons for the feeling were different, of course, but Lyarra knew it well. If you were a scrawny bastard girl running about with a wooden sword, every smile was a treasured, precious thing; a piece of acknowledgement where you didn't know when or if it would ever come again. Growing beautiful had done Lyarra few favors because it had cast more smiles into doubt as everything male that wasn't family now had to be watched carefully.

 

"I've heard so much about so many of your relatives that I believe I've lost all track of the details." Lyarra started. "I know that at least one other Walda here is a wonderful musician and plays the lyre. Do you play as well, Lady Walda?"

 

"Oh, no, Princess, Grandfather said he wouldn't waste coin on music lessons for a girl who sounded like an ungreased wagon wheel." The girl, who was much of an age with Gwyn and Lyarra tittered with nervous embarrassment. "I'm no-one of any importance or, well, I'm not very talented. I'm not very interesting, either, truth be told."

 

"I've not lived the varied life my husband has, so I cannot speak with Prince Oberyn's authority, but my Prince insists that he's never met someone who was completely uninteresting in his travels. As such, I must insist that you've got  _ some _ talent that you're just hiding."

 

"Yes." Gwyn interjected, her embroidery neatly settled in the lap of her own green dress.

 

Her dress was of better quality and neater make than Walda's, but likely only because Walda's looked to have been constructed from two hand-me-down dresses passed on from someone else. Lyarra saw an opening. She was about to put it into words, trying to find a way to say it without inviting insult.

 

"I bet you're a wonderful pattern-maker." Gwyn observed, casting her own eye over the other blonde's dress and speaking with clear admiration. "Did you piece your dress yourself?"

 

Walda lit up. Her pink face beamed as she nodded and smoothed her hands over her skirt. The two shades of green in the dress were different, but cunningly arranged so it looked like it was a purposeful design element. Had it not been for the fact that there were still visible holes where embroidery had been picked out of it at the collar and in a few other places it would have been nearly impossible to tell the dress was the result of reworking.

 

"I did!" Walda explained proudly. "Father gave me the lighter green I used on the bodice and the flared parts of the sleeves. It was a tunic. Then I got the darker green from one of my Uncles' capes after he got blood on it. Black Walder doesn't often wear anything other than black, but - actually, this might not have originally been his.”

 

Walda looked momentarily worried about the provenance of her dress. Lyarra shot Gwyn a look as her friend blanked her face to keep laughter at bay. Lyarra restrained herself from sighing. Gwyn's sense of humor was just awful at times. She would think it was hilarious that Walda had made a dress out of a cape pulled from some murder victim by the girl's most infamous relative.

 

"Before the Gods Marked me I often did that." Lyarra smiled. "And my wedding was so rushed that we didn't have time to order fine fabric from abroad, so my father gave me white silk for my gown from a surcoat he was planning to make. It only made it more special."

 

"Lord Stark is very kind." Walda agreed, as if kindness were a rare and alien thing for anyone to display. "Mother sent me down to get a tray of tarts from the kitchen for her this morning. I came upon him in the hall and he insisted walking me up here himself. I thought he was going to take the tray for a moment!"

 

"Lord Stark's like that." Gwyn's grin was genuine. "I think it's a Northern quality. As they are not knighted and take no squires all of them attend their own gear and weapons, so they value a useful lady."

 

"It would be nice to have a husband like that." Walda's sigh was longing, and her tone quiet and Lyarra felt her heart go out to the girl.

 

She remembered what it was like being unattractive. Back then she'd been nothing but a long face, skinned knees and elbows, and several of the guards had referred to her as 'Bag o' Bones' just as Arya was 'Arya Underfoot' to the servants. Back then she hadn't wanted a husband, but she'd been desperately afraid of never having one as the meaning of the word  _ 'bastard' _ sunk deeper and deeper into her soul.

 

"I feel the need to speak in defense of the men of my own home." Lady Myria, who'd turned and chased away an encroaching Frey lady with a few perfectly polite and terrifying bits of chitchat, joined the conversation merrily. "Surely, Princess, you will join me."

 

"I have no complaints to make of my Prince." Lyarra couldn't help blushing or the honesty that follows. "At least not as a husband."

 

"The Prince snores." Lady Myria stage-whispered to Gwyn and Walda, producing a snicker from the first and a whinny from the latter.

 

"Not badly." Lyarra replied before snorting, forgetting that princesses weren't supposed to use the common Northern method of derision. She ignored Lady Myria's glare, however, because she couldn't and wouldn't change everything about herself. "Though, in retrospect, being  _ aware _ of  _ why _ most of the women and half the men who frequent Prince Doran's court know this does get tiresome."

 

Lady Myria's surprised laugh was genuine. Gwyn looked torn between exasperation that Lyarra had said that aloud and real amusement, though it was hard to tell. Her expression had slipped back into the polite, hard to read, mask she often wore. Walda's eyes widened in first sympathy, then she tittered in nervous amusement when Lyarra tapped her Marked wrist to indicate she wasn't worried or shamed, nor could she be. It was just a rather darkly funny thing to know her husband was so known in his own special way.

 

"Think of it as one of his charming foibles."

 

"Lady Myria, Prince Oberyn's habit of encouraging the Lady Arya to violence is a charming foible, the fact that his feet are always freezing is a charming foible, and even the snoring has its own charms. I think  _ foibles _ must mean something different in Dorne if you believe the other thing of Oberyn's is one."

 

"If nothing else you don't ever have to worry about him dying in his sleep with you unawares." Gwyn commented slyly, her eyes cutting over towards where one of the women who'd earlier jokingly referred to the lascivious way Lord Walder Frey had looked at Gwyn.

 

The woman was oblivious, but Walda was not. She lowered her voice and leaned in after glancing carefully around the room. Lyarra felt a moment's thrill, wondering if some secret was about to be imparted.

 

"Grandfather-Lord Walder is too  _ mean _ to die." The yellow-haired girl whispered.

 

"If the Stranger feared mortal cruelty he'd never have dared take Lady Joanna away." Gwyn said scornfully, but softened it by nudging Walda's knee with her own. "Death is the one God all pray to, if not for. Did you ever hear the joke about the Stranger's Favorite Wife?"

 

"Do  _ not _ repeat the jokes Uncle Benjen brings back from the Wall!" Lyarra admonished even as she worked to keep herself from blushing.

 

She'd actually taught Gwyn that joke. Lyarra suddenly realized that she wouldn't get in trouble for knowing it now that she was wed. Her husband wasn't exactly the type to be horrified that his wife had picked up a few dirty jokes from her only uncle. Oberyn would probably  _ like _ the joke about the 'First Silent Sister'. It went into really… well, gross and terribly bawdy detail as to why she didn't speak. Lyarra resolved to tell it to him when he was drinking something. If it made Theon and Robb launch ale from their noses, it might do the same to her husband.

 

"I've heard it." The plump girl grinned back guiltily, and confirmed in a quiet, careful voice.

Lady Myria laughed softly and leaned forward.

 

"Well, I have not, and that isn't right at all, Princess. I insist that you rectify this as soon as we aren't at a public tea."

 

"Even if it would have hilarious results?" Gwyn wanted to know.

 

"A temptation we'll have to avoid as not to face Lady Jynessa's wrath." Lady Myria regained control of the conversation solemnly and twisted it back on track. "But, please, Lady Walda, tell us more about your family friend in the capital! Dorne lost fewer to the plague than the Riverlands, but we lost many. My younger brother is gone to me, and two cousins as well."

 

Totally at ease with them and beaming at the attention, Walda went on.

 

"Oh, yes, Lord Baelish was a good friend to my uncle and grandfather." Walda chattered happily. "I don't know what his business was, only that he was on the Small Council. I think he owned a boarding house or some such, for uncle talked a lot about nights spent at one of his establishments. Though, well, it might have been another such place to spend the night, if you take my meaning?"

 

They all nodded solemnly and Gwyn rose gracefully and returned with a tray of custard tarts. Walda accepted one happily, as did Lyarra, who found her appetite finally returning from the nauseous place it had been. Walda went on, beaming at the positive attention she was receiving from such great ladies. Her whole life she'd been the fat one. She had been ignored and relegated to more menial tasks than her other age-mates. Lyarra knew the feeling, and was as happy to just give the girl a chance to shine a little as she was at Walda's complete lack of caution over what she said.

 

"Still, Lord Baelish sent a lot of letters. You know he didn't really die from the grey plague, as it were, but from a wheezy chest that he came down with while being inoculated?"

 

"Really?" Lyarra was surprised. "That's very uncommon. Goatscale isn't serious, usually. Just a fever and a little rash around the broken skin."

 

Lyarra's inoculation scar was like most of those in the North. It was a neat wolf's head of little white dots on the back of her right shoulder. Oberyn's was a sunburst pierced by a 'spear' that was really just a line. It was more visible against his richly tinted skin, and Lyarra had ended up worrying it a bit with her teeth one night when she decided to put her mouth on all of her husband's scars. She wasn't sure why she'd decided to do that, but her prince had been appreciative enough that she'd decided to trust her instincts more in bedplay.

 

"Sometimes the very old or very young don't do so well with it." Gwyn frowned. "Old Nan came through fine, but the potter down in Wintertown took a fever and was gone in two days."

 

"Aye."

 

"Prince Quentyn took a bad fever when he was inoculated, but it cleared up after a day and night." Lady Myria added. "All of Dorne was relieved, but Prince Doran's anxiety cannot be articulated."

 

Everyone agreed to that and a few moments were taken to sip and refresh cups of tea. Then, with a touch of hesitancy as she wasn't answering a question this time, Lady Walda Frey went on. Lyarra's heart went out to her for the hopeful way she spoke, as if expecting to be shot down and desperate enough for the chance at approval to try.

 

"Prince Doran's such a good prince. He saved so many lives that I bet you couldn't count them, what with seeing to the inoculations for the smallfolk and poorer houses all over Westeros the way that he did." Walda enthused. "We've got wolf-marks because our goats and the Crannogman who led them down came from the North. Everyone was too afraid there was some kind of magic to change the kind of stamps we used. Father sent the goats on to other Houses, though, wanting them to owe him, I guess. All our smallfolk wear the Martell Sun and Spear on their shoulders."

 

_ That _ , Lyarra decided, was useful to know.

 

"Though, I suppose it makes sense that Lord Baelish died of a weakness in the chest, now that I think of it. Just like you not hearing of him makes sense, Your Grace."

 

Now Walda looked eager to speak, shooting a furtive glance around again and finding that Lady Jynessa had managed to politely antagonize most of the room into ignoring the new Princess and her little cluster of younger companions.

 

"How so?"

 

"Well, you see, Lord Baelish took a  _ terrible _ chest wound when he got into a duel as a greenboy." Walda whispered. "Cut from navel to neck, my uncle said, by your own uncle, Brandon Stark. In a duel for the Lady Catelyn's hand back when she was a Tully, no less!"

 

That was not a story Lyarra had ever heard, nor even Gwyn judging by the brief flash of shock in her blue eyes.

 

" _ Really _ ?" Gwyn still knew how to prompt someone to speak, and her tone of fascination had Walda preening.

 

" _ Really _ !" The Frey girl whispered back urgently. "Lord Baelish loved her truly and thought that your uncle wouldn't do her right as a husband. He did have a bit of a reputation."

 

"He had the Wolf's Blood." Lyarra agreed, because she'd only ever heard good of him. Save for his habits of bedding and leaving any woman who'd have him, and few would refuse the handsome Heir to Winterfell in the tales she'd heard.

 

"Anyway, Lord Brandon nearly killed him, but that's not the most shocking thing." Walda whispered and grinned at Lyarra in a way that suddenly gave her broad, pleasant face just a hint of the weasel's slyness that her other relatives often wore. "While he was dying in the Red Keep Lord Baelish found the Seven, or was just afraid of finding his afterlife a bit warm. Either way he wrote letters and sent them out by ravens to half the houses in Westeros."

 

"A deathbed confession?"

 

Lyarra was fascinated. North or South, Seven or Old Gods of the Forest, such a confession had great meaning. She'd only heard of it being done a few times by raven, though. Her curiosity prompted another question.

 

"Had he no kin?"

 

"None." Walda shook her head, bit her lip, and then went on. "Lord Baelish confessed to taking  _ both _ Lord Hoster's daughters' maidenheads, and wrote that he'd gotten Lady Lysa with child. Lord Hoster killed the babe with moon tea, though, and nearly took Lady Lysa with it when she half bled-out onto the sheets.  _ That's _ why he made her marry old Lord Arryn; she was used goods and the Falcon Lord was too old and desperate for the Riverlands' allegiance to care. Not that I think Lord Arryn would have taken her if he'd suspected that Lord Hoster had ruined her womb forcing the babe out too late.  _ Everyone _ knows you can't take moon tea beyond the third moon without problems. Even that late's a little risky."

 

Lyarra didn't know what to say to that and was afraid that when she lowered her tea cup, her horror would show clearly on her face. Thankfully, Lyarra's Prince had finally arrived to save her. Perhaps he deserved _some_ reward for good timing even, despite her earlier thoughts of his unforgivable lateness.

 

* * *

 

"You what?"

 

"I need to speak to my father.  _ Now _ !" Lyarra told him with quiet insistence, pushing her hands against his chest to put some distance between their bodies.

 

Oberyn scowled in disappointment and frustration, but acquiesced. He'd spent the morning agreeably. First, in the practice yard. Then he'd taken several of his retinue and a number of guards and gone on a long ride down some of the less muddy and more manageable tracks around the Twins. The roads were still too soaked to make for easy passage for the wheelhouse, but a lighter party could pass well enough.

 

Besides, Oberyn had needed the space. Had it not been more important to give his bride a chance to act the princess away from King's Landing, Oberyn would have saved her from the annoyance of her long, drawn-out tea with the Frey ladies. As it was, he'd left her to her unpleasant lesson in being a princess and gone out to see what information he could stir up.

With most of his party being Salty Dornish, there was no way for them to sneak about. They looked nothing like the fair, bright-haired Riverlands peasantry. They certainly would stick out at the Crossing itself. Almost nobody within the castle was without some sort of Frey blood.

 

So instead Oberyn had gone riding. What he'd found had been interesting in the extreme. First off, Oberyn had discovered that the sight of his family crest upon his surcoat was enough to produce a surprisingly strong reaction from the peasantry. In Dorne smallfolk wouldn't cower away from their Lords, but that distance was there. Here, in a completely different country, Doran's work had led to Oberyn actually ending up in a situation he wasn't quite sure how to deal with.

 

Being amongst sellswords and common soldiers was one thing. Oberyn could handle that in his sleep. War was different and all men were the same when their sword was bare. (In every sense of that saying, as well). But farmers and fishermen were folk Oberyn had never really consorted with. Now he found that the Riverlands peasants seemed to hold anyone from his House as some kind of long-lost lordly friend. He'd been offered flowers, fresh bowls of cream and berries, and any news he could wish along with their thanks as women thrust toddlers in his direction, praising him for saving them despite his denials and showing him their own inoculation scars.

 

Oberyn was looking forward to telling his brother that there seemed to be some confusion over whether  _ Doran _ or  _ Dorne _ was the proper name for the place or the prince involved. Nor did the smallfolk seem to care. When Oberyn had gotten across that he was their savior's brother that had only changed their praise slightly as they demanded he deliver their thanks to his Prince.

 

The statues in Qarth no longer seemed the joke Oberyn had made them into. If this was how the smallfolk were receiving him… Oberyn suddenly resented the trip to the Usurper's hospitality even more. He needed to speak to Doran in person. None of this could be trusted to a raven even as a charming anecdote. Anyone with half-a-mind could read between the lines of such a tale.

 

The trip's possibilities had excited him. So, for that matter, had the ferocity of the spar he'd shared that morning. Black Walder Frey was no handsome man. Even if he hadn't been a repulsive ass in terms of personality, physically Oberyn preferred his men as pretty as his women. Something he'd once told Damien just to annoy him when the younger man was being insufferable. Still, Black Walder sought to unnerve and intimidate his opponents with his skill, which was not inconsiderable. Having an opponent who was fierce, mean, and for whom Oberyn felt no qualms about accidentally doing some harm, had been a pleasure.

 

" _ Now _ ?"

 

Oberyn punctuated the word by rubbing his hips against hers. He'd grown hard during the kiss he'd pulled her into as soon as the door to their guest quarters closed. He had no fear of being overheard now. 

 

He'd realized that his wife's direwolf wasn't just a wild pet when she’d alerted him to a few “improvements” the Freys had given the guest quarters in their keep the night they’d arrived. Ghost had been the one who'd alerted them to the three listening pipes in the wall (now stuffed with wet clay) and the secret doorway hidden under a stone in the hearth (sealed shut with molten lead). Ghost was currently gnawing happily on the three hares that a peasant boy of maybe ten-and-two had thrust into his hands when praising Oberyn for the inoculation that had saved his mother. The direwolf's proof of worth had also left their guest quarters the most secure place to talk.

 

"Husband…" Lyarra huffed as Oberyn, while musing on his day, also directed his attention, lips, and teeth to his wife's neck as he bent over to caress her. She shoved gently at his chest again. "I need to speak to Father. It's important. I heard things at tea."

 

"That is what such tea parties are truly for." Oberyn pulled back reluctantly. "You could tell me now and speak to Lord Stark later."

 

"I want time to fully appreciate this later." Lyarra replied, her face blushing but her dark gray eyes steady as she reached down and gently squeezed his manhood through his breeches beneath his shirt and coat. "And I can tell you both at once. We all should speak of it."

 

Oberyn growled his appreciation and leaned down for a kiss. It was a satisfying duel of tongues, but he could feel Lyarra begin to pull back even as sparks of pleasure and arousal began to jump between them over the bond they shared. Had he been the only one who mattered in the situation Oberyn would have had them in bed. He was not, however, interested in masturbating. As that was the only situation where only his wants mattered in bed, Oberyn reluctantly pulled away from his wife.

 

"A promise I expect you to live up to, darling."

 

Lyarra smiled at him, sweet, a little bit shy, and bright-eyed in a way he decided was worth the wait. She was slowly growing more adventurous. He looked forward to seeing what pleasures he could coax her into sharing with him tonight, or if it would be a time where she took the initiative.

 

Turning towards the door Oberyn adjusted himself and called for a tray of food and a message to be sent to Lord Stark that his daughter, the Princess Lyarra, would have him visit for a while if he had the time. If Lady Arya and young Lord Brandon were with him, as Oberyn expected them to be, he invited Ser Daemon to take them down to the yard with a few guards and run them through some practice drills and footwork.

 

A quarter hour later and Oberyn was comfortably settled with his wife tucked against his side and a glass of semi-decent wine. He'd been enjoying coaxing her to take sips in between sharing slices of apple and cheese with her while they waited. Given the sense of anticipation he was feeling, the closeness stoked the fires of his lust nicely. He currently had a strategically placed pillow draped across his lap.

 

Not that he would need it long in Ned Stark's presence. Flirting to make the man grimace aside, a face that dour was an instant cure for blue balls. How he'd ended up with six children  _ boggled _ Oberyn. The man was so damned boring…

 

"Lord Stark, you'll forgive me if I'm too comfortable to rise?" Oberyn japed when his goodfather arrived.

 

Even as she pulled back from the warm embrace she'd shared with her father, his wife shot him a dark look. She understood perfectly. Oberyn mentally congratulated himself for the initial success of his slow corruption of the she-wolf's stuffy Northern morals.

 

"Entirely." Lord Stark said and then took a seat without invitation.

 

Oberyn decided that he liked the man better now that he was comfortable being as rude as Oberyn was. If nothing else, it made every insult more satisfying. At least now he wasn't all noble sacrifice and sullen expressions. Lyarra retaliated against Oberyn by sitting beside her father on the arm of the broad leather armchair he'd sunken into, opposite the low, broad sofa that Oberyn had chosen as his and Lyarra's seats earlier.

 

"Father, I heard something disturbing today."

 

"I don't doubt it." Lord Stark growled as though he were real wolf.

 

Ghost, hearing this, rose to her feet and padded over to nose around Lyarra's skirt. Oberyn watched in amusement as the lanky, hound-sized pup enjoyed a scratch around her thick white ruff and then her ears. She even sniffed Lord Stark's fingers in a friendly manner.

 

"I spent the morning fending off requests for the hand of every single one of my unwed children, and then reminding several widows that your Uncle Benjen's Night Watch vows lasted a lifetime. Ostensibly it was just a nice chat between responsible lords. In truth it was a fishing expedition."

 

"You don't sound impressed with the angler's skill." Oberyn drawled and Ned Stark snorted before turning wry gray eyes, a shade or two lighter than Lyarra's, on the Viper.

 

"After you've corresponded with Hoster Tully for five-and-ten years, you learn what a true fisherman is. Also, you mean  _ anglers _ . Everything with the Freys is plural."

 

"A tragedy in linguistics."

 

"Aye."

 

"Speaking of Freys." Lyarra interrupted them, looking back at Oberyn in a quelling way that had him raising his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn't done anything that inflammatory, yet. "Father, I heard a disturbing rumor."

 

"I would pay it no mind. Southrons are full of such, especially their highborn ladies." Eddard brushed it off but Oberyn knew better.

 

"I imagine you heard many such rumors. You credited this one, why?"

 

Oberyn's tone had Ned Stark sitting up and taking note, brushing away the headache he'd been probing between his eyes with massaging fingers and turning towards his daughter.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

"During the tea, Gwyn, Lady Myria, and I managed to get Lady Walda-."

 

"Which one?" Oberyn wanted to know. "That will make all the difference in credibility."

 

"The one they call Fat Walda." Lyarra grimaced at the name, then turned her attention on her husband, visibly distracted for a second. "She's a sweet girl, Oberyn, if a bit naive and shy. This is a cruel House to live in."

 

"As they call their own kin Fat Walda as a pet name, yes, I believe you could say that with reasonable accuracy."

 

"That alone is reason enough not to give a child over to it." Ned rubbed a hand over his face. 

 

"Any child. How that old letch could think I would take Lady Gwyn out of that _festering_ _pit_ of mentally deranged lions and then hand her to _him…_ "

 

Oberyn couldn't help a smile at that description of House Lannister, though his temper coiled and slithered around the edges. The man had no respect for the Lions of Casterly Rock. Still, he held to that despicable oath the Usurper had pried out of him despite that. It was a dichotomy that infuriated Oberyn in a man that might have otherwise been tolerable, if unfortunately dour.

 

"Gwyn's not what I want to talk about, though Lady Walda is another matter." Lyarra brushed all that away. "What she  _ said _ is what's important."

 

Lord Stark gestured and Oberyn leaned forward to mind his manners and offer the man a tankard of ale. Stark accepted it gratefully and took a deep pull as Lyarra stared at her father in truly fascinating worry, then blundered forward as bluntly as anyone born of Ned Stark's loins ever could.

 

"Apparently when the Master of Coin died of inoculation fever, he wrote letters to a lot of southron Houses." Lyarra blurted out. "His deathbed confession claimed he'd taken both Lady Lysa Tully and Lady Stark's maidenheads when they were girls."

 

Lord Stark choked on his ale magnificently. The frothy beverage came out of his nose and settled in his beard in a fine impression of a mad dog. He hacked, he coughed, he rose to his feet and half-bent over, spluttering. Lyarra beat her father apologetically between the shoulder blades and asked if he could breathe. Eventually the man wiped his mouth off on his sleeve and regained his breath.

 

"That's ridiculous!" Lord Stark croaked, turning and setting the now half-full tankard on the mantle and taking his daughter by the shoulders. "Lyarra, what are you talking about?"

 

_ This was better than Braavosi theater, _ Oberyn decided.

 

"Lord Petyr Baelish died of inoculation fever. It went to his lungs, he died slowly, and when he was feverish he made a full, public deathbed confession of his sins. Including sleeping with both of his foster father's daughters. He even said he got a child on Lady Lysa, but that Lord Hoster caused her to miscarry the babe with moon tea." Lyarra told him in a quiet rush. "Father, I'm sorry, but if someone so downtrodden by her family as Walda knows it,  _ everyone _ must be speaking of it."

 

Oberyn watched as Lord Eddard Stark, Warden of the North, personally feared in battle, feared as a Leader at War, and respected as an honorable man by all of Westeros, slowly turned purple in outrage. He mentally shook hands with Petyr Baelish. Though all he'd heard of the man suggested he was nothing more than a slimy pimp who mistreated those in his employ, Oberyn had to admit that he'd just done more to infuriate Ned Stark from the grave than Oberyn had managed in two moons time. Oberyn didn't have to like the reputation of the man in question to respect his achievements.

 

Meanwhile Lyarra was biting her lip and generally looking distressed. Worse, Oberyn could feel her creeping unhappiness. It was like a cool dark cloud that hovered at the back of his mind occasionally, and he was coming to hate the thing. Lyarra, under the right circumstances, shone when she was happy and confident. Life in Winterfell had not made the castle's bastard given to confidence or happiness, despite the many good memories she held of the place. Instead it was left to Oberyn to show the girl had to enjoy the varied pleasure of life.

 

Apparently that was going to include saving her from her endless concern from others. Oberyn could almost feel Ellaria with him in that moment and his heart ached. " _ Poor Prince, cursed to care for ladies who make you act like a decent human being." _ She'd often teased him so when he complained that she would not permit him to be properly callous. She'd never put up with his horseshit, gentle hearted though Ellaria Sand had been.

 

Standing, casting aside the pillow he definitely did not need any longer, Oberyn stood and drew the attention of the man now looming in the center of the room. Purple faced Ned Stark was a volcano in the making. Oberyn had been foolish enough to climb about on the rocks of a small islet in the Stepstones where an eruption was taking place, once. One of his companions who'd been less quick, and less able to afford expensive boots, had ended up losing both feet to green rot when the burns had gone bad, then dying of blood poisoning afterward.

 

"You needn't look at me so, Lord Stark, for once I'm utterly innocent in the question of a lady's virtue." Oberyn held up his hands, palm out, in front of him.

 

"But you  _ knew _ ." His goodfather actually snarled at him, taking a step forward while Lyarra stared at him in shock.

 

"I told to your wife of it, in passing." Oberyn admitted, torn between pleasure at having finally broken through the man's gargantuan bulwark of self-control and dismay at the sudden, unexpected jolt of creeping dismay coming from Lyarra.

 

_ "You what?" _

 

Dammit, Lyarra's expression was going from dismay at having to tell her father to just genuine distress at the whole situation. Oberyn was hardly going to shield the girl the Gods had wed him to against his will from the truth. That would lead to leaving both of them open to attack due to ignorance. He could have spoken to her of it beforehand, however, or nudged her into speaking to him. He'd just assumed that whatever she had to tell her father was some small, unimportant matter spoken of between children.

 

_ 'If she's old enough to marry, she's old enough to respect. Do not demean your wives.'  _ His mother's voice from long past came to him in memory and his knuckles stung along with his pride as he answered the Quiet Wolf's rather loud question.  _ 'They are your partners in life, treat them like it.' _

 

"I told her she should write her father of it. Otherwise I am not getting involved in House Tully's dirty laundry. Lord Stark, it seems almost all Houses got such letters. I'd frankly assumed it was rumor fodder in the North as it is everywhere until your wife looked surprised. Even then I was perhaps half-sure she just couldn't believe I had said it to her face."

 

"And you chose to disrespect  _ my wife _ to her face, why? She's no part of your quarrel with me."

 

"Lyarra is my wife and those who disrespect her to my face can expect mockery to be the most moderate response of which I will avail myself." Oberyn spat back, his own temper flaring.

 

" _ Enough _ !"

 

Both men jumped as Ghost shoved her way between them, sharp teeth bared at just above knee level. That was enough to move both the Wolf and the Viper back a couple of steps and turn to look at where Lyarra stood. Her fists were clenched at her sides and her cheeks flushed before she brought her arms up and crossed them imperiously over her chest.

 

"The Gods have brought my Prince and I together, Father, and we're making the best of it." 

 

Lyarra breathed out as she spoke and Oberyn was temporarily distracted from the twinge of memory he'd had at her exasperated display of temper and power by the way her posture had the pale mounds of her breasts welling up against the neckline of the gown she was wearing.

It had a low, scooped neckline, but had been made in the Northern fashion with long, dagged sleeves and a flowing skirt. The pale lavender of the gown brought out the warm tones in the thick mass of dark curls cascading down her back. The little rim of violets and snowdrops embroidered around the neckline just drew more attention to the charms already on display. Oberyn found he liked the color on her, and spent a moment regretting again that he was stuck in a room with his wife and her father, dealing with the issues in Ned Stark's marriage alliance rather than working to improve his own.

 

"I wish you would both work harder to take advantage of the fact that our Houses are now joined rather than snipe at each other like boys in the schoolroom." Lyarra bit her lip then, her eyes warm and apologetic as they turned to her father, and studiously refusing embarrassment at having claimed her father and the husband who was older than him childish. "I'm very sorry, Father. Lady Stark is a good wife to you. She's a wonderful mother. I have no doubt that the claim this Lord Baelish made against Lady Stark was brought on by fever dreams and fear of damnation or whatever the Seven are spouting to get gold from the peasantry today. The man was sick, people shouldn't take it seriously."

 

"That is precisely why they will take it as gospel." Oberyn shook his head wryly.

 

"Aye, people don't often lie on their deathbeds. Not when getting right before whatever Gods they claim." Ned Stark reluctantly agreed then surprised Oberyn by offering him his hand. "It was none of your doing. I have not said so before now, but I would have you speak of such things, if you hear rumors of my family or kin. You are, after all, now numbered among them."

 

Oberyn felt his lip curl, but he took the man's hand. He would have been just as happy not to, but the reasons to do so outweighed those not to. First, he wished to antagonize the man personally, not politically. Secondly, he had no desire to antagonize Lyarra at all as he was growing to enjoy her presence in his life even beyond her growing adventurousness in bed. 

 

Finally, the man was right. Like it or not House Martell was going to be associated with House Stark and all of its connections from this point on for at least another generation. Allowing the open mockery of Hoster Tully's despicable treatment of his daughter would be harmful.

 

"As you say." Oberyn gestured back to their seats and was pleased when Lyarra moved back to sit at his side, though he noted Ghost curled in the floor between all of them. He curled his arm around her shoulders and noted that she remained sitting stiffly despite it. "You'd heard nothing of it?"

 

"No, and do not say my wife was keeping it from me." Stark glared, but then breathed out and looked troubled. "She would have waited to hear from her father, perhaps, but she would tell me of such a thing. Especially with the damned weirwood plot rumors going around."

 

"Speaking of," Oberyn sat forward, knowing he'd get no better opening. "I cannot positively identify a young weirwood sapling, can you? Say, about knee-high, when many saplings have pale bark."

 

"Aye, but are their leaves blood red and five fingered?"

 

"These were four-fingered." Oberyn answered, frowning at the man's mocking tone; as if he was supposed to know what a young weirwood looked like. He'd never seen one before Lyarra walked him through Winterfell's godswood. "Do their leaves change as they age?"

 

"No," Lyarra interjected, "Not that I know of."

 

"No, they are always five fingered. What other tree would carry red leaves in summer?"

 

"Gwyn told me of a tree in the Westerlands. Until it's man-high, its leaves are pale red and the bark looks white. Then the leaves turn a dark purplish color and the bark turns gray, but I don't know how many fingers the leaves have, if any. Gwyn told me they grind the leaves of young trees to make a bright, cheap red dye in the Westerlands."

 

"Well, if she would recognize them I think you need to go on a ride tomorrow with your daughter and her ladies, Lord Stark." Oberyn mused and the man leaned forward, his gray eyes sharp.

 

"You saw something."

 

"When we rode out today my party passed several villages." Oberyn confirmed. "Each one had a newly planted godswood, and  _ every single one _ had a little white tree no higher than my waist with four-fingered red leaves."

 

The two Northerners in the room both looked furious and relieved in equal measure. Oberyn noted with some chagrin that the expressions were eerily similar mirrored on Lord Stark's unhandsome face and Lyarra's beautiful visage. Either way, Oberyn was relieved when Lord Stark shook his head at the sight of Lyarra attempting to rise even as Oberyn kept his arm firmly around his wife's shoulders so she couldn't get up.

 

"Lyarra, there's no point in going out at night. We've no cause to ride around House Freys lands, nor would it be wise. We already know they are no trustworthy House." Lord Stark rubbed a hand over his face. "Nor am I the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands. Lord Hoster had his son deputed to look into this matter, and he is on his way here. He might arrive any day."

 

"Indeed, our task will be to have evidence to present to him when he arrives." Oberyn agreed, reluctantly willing to accept the man as an ally - or, worse, assign himself as one of the Usurper's dogs' supporters. Given the situation, however, he could do no less. "Lord Stark, I suggest that tomorrow you and I keep the Freys occupied, and Lyarra can do the same with the ladies if she does not ride out herself. I'd planned to send my own people out, but they're mostly Salty Dornish such as myself and stick out like a nude dancing girl amidst a choir of Septas. Your own men look more like these Riverlanders, and a few guards won't be missed."

 

"They do."

 

"And Gwyn's low-ranking enough not to be missed." Lyarra agreed reluctantly, obviously desiring to take action herself.

 

"I'll send Ser Daemon with her. If a modestly dowered knight's daughter and a knighted bastard vanish at the same time, they'll assume they're either courting or trysting, not spying." Oberyn suggested. "It will also serve to cool the old Weasel's ardor if he thinks he's not going to be the first one to plough that field."

 

"That's disgusting." Lyarra pulled a face.

 

"That's Lord Frey." Oberyn sneered and began to pet Lyarra's hip with the hand around her waist. They'd dealt with everything Lyarra had spoken of. The Quiet Wolf would surely send a letter to ask his goodfather about the rumors, or save that for when they were staying at Riverrun. They'd discussed his discovery of the likely false weirwood saplings. Surely the man would leave soon.

 

"A good plan." Ned agreed and balanced his elbows on his knees, his expression as serious as always until the Viper thought he saw a flash of something almost like wickedness hidden in the man's gray eyes. "Have you written to Robb lately, Lyarra?"

 

"I left a letter with Lord Howland so he might post it from his ravenry. Why, did you have one? Is something wrong?"

 

Lyarra's complete distraction was instant and obvious. She even batted his hand away from her hip as she leaned forward. As if in collusion, Ghost rose and settled her head across Oberyn's knees, necessitating that he petted about her ears to keep her from drooling on him in protest.

 

"Not wrong per say, but I had a raven from him this morning. Actually, there was a letter in it for you. Where did I put it?"

 

The man's searching through his pockets was so utterly staged that Oberyn was offended by the obviousness of it. Lyarra continued to accept it in all innocence and eagerness as she greedily watched the proceedings. She all but vibrated as her father carefully and slowly opened the oilskin pouch and began to rifle through three or four neatly folded and sealed letters. Oberyn resented this immensely. He did this to his daughters. The fact that he was forced to sit there, ignored by all but the direwolf, as he watched his goodfather do it to his wife was not amusing.

 

"Here we are." Lord Stark announced, squinting in bad playacting at the letters. "Actually, I think you have more than one from Robb here. Hold on, is this one from Sansa for you or-."

 

"Oh, Father, stop!" Lyarra finally lost all patience and went over to sit on the arm of her father's armchair, reaching out to beg for her letters and getting a chuckle and a buss on the cheek for her trouble.

 

"Here." Stark handed Lyarra three letters and rose, giving her a brief hug and then nodding at Oberyn with smug eyes. "Sleep well, Your Grace."

 

"And you, Your Lordship."

 

Oberyn's smile was all teeth and unhappy defeat. Lyarra was totally engrossed in her letters. Undoubtedly she'd want to answer them immediately. Resolving only to put off his plans for satisfaction until later, Oberyn quit the uncomfortable sofa for the comfortably plush rug in front of the fire. After some negotiation involving a belly rub Ghost condescended to allow herself to be used as a pillow. The shewolf pup was, after all, usually perfectly agreeable towards him, even if obedience was mostly reserved for Lyarra.

 

At least if he fell asleep on the floor Lyarra would wake him. When she did that, Oberyn promised himself, he'd collect his deferred pleasure. Unless falling asleep on the rug did his back in. Then he'd accept a massage as forfeit.

 

 

* * *

 

"It's not  _ fair _ ! I'm older than Arya! I should be going to King's Landing and Sunspear and getting to meet more princes."

 

"Ladies do not  _ whine _ , Sansa." Lady Catelyn Stark told her favorite daughter firmly, working not to be angry at her.

 

It was not Sansa's fault that this was not to be her time to shine. Lyarra's wedding was, Cat was now willing to believe, a true godsend. At first she'd felt it some mockery of her husband's Gods targeted against her for daring to bring a Sept north. Mayhaps even the bastard herself was such revenge, for Cat had spent her entire married life fretting over the fact that most of her children did not have the Stark looks while the bastard did.

 

Now, however, Cat was willing to feel humbled. She even wondered if, perhaps, humility hadn't been the message all along. She'd been raised well, she'd always sought to be good and pious. She lived by her House's motto: _ Family, Duty, Honor. _

 

Nowhere in her lessons as a child had  _ humility _ been broached as more than lip service, for all that it was written of so widely within all of the Seven's great religious texts. All aspects of the Seven demanded humility from their worshippers, for did the Gods not hold the power and grant their boons to those who lived exemplary lives? Did they not reward those whom acted by the standards of humility, kindness, honor, and piousness? Looking back on a lifetime of pride rooted in her family's standing, her beauty, and her own conduct, Cat was beginning to wonder if she hadn't missed an important lesson. If so, perhaps this was her second chance.

 

"I'm sorry, Mother." Sansa apologized contritely, pausing in her embroidery to look around Lady Stark's otherwise empty solar with a satisfied expression. "Are we going to talk more about running a household today?"

 

That question caused slightly guilty relief to well up in Cat's heart. Just a few moons ago she'd felt she had ages to prepare her daughter for being a lord's lady wife. After all, Sansa wasn't yet two-and-ten. Lady Stark herself been eight-and-ten, almost nine-and-ten when she'd wed Eddard, though she'd have wed Brandon Stark at seven-and-ten had things worked out as her father originally planned. Thinking of her father's plans, however, left Cat feeling unsettled over the man she'd grown up so close to and idolizing. It was a new experience, and it was completely dreadful.

 

"Yes, today we'll work on more bookkeeping, as sums are not your strong suit." Cat agreed just to have her mind occupied. "Your embroidery is already as good as many professionals, so we won't spend so much time at it anymore. I've been thinking you might also shadow me during the day, and when you've seen more, I'll give you some of the responsibilities that Lady Gwyn had before she left."

 

Sansa looked a mixed of pleased and disappointed at that and Cat felt a wave of chagrin. In truth, Sansa needn't be as involved in the kitchens as the ward Eddard had brought to their household was. Lady Gwyn Parren was removed from inheriting a castle of her own by many generations, and while she was pretty enough to hope for a landed knight, the Westerlands girl was never going to manage a lord with her dowry.

 

Sansa was going to marry spectacularly, Cat knew. With what the Plague had done to almost every House, there were many heirs belonging to influential Lords, future Lords Paramount, and even higher yet in need of a wife. Cat herself was hoping that her husband might make arrangements with his friend, King Robert, while he was in King's Landing. The Crown Prince needed to wed as soon as possible given the political situation, and who better suited to stabilize his grown than the North? It certainly wouldn't be Dorne.

 

That worried Cat. On one hand, marrying into Dorne was likely the North's salvation if the Maesters were right. Twenty years of winter could destroy the North without adequate food stocks and good southron allies. When Winter came, the only part of Westeros that still had a growing season was Dorne, for even in the the North's stories of the Long Night, crops had come up from past the Red Mountains where the Night King's magic had little influence.

 

Not that Cat listened to Old Nan's tales, but she  _ did _ have ears. Ned's position as Warden of the North had been bolstered considerably by the wedding. The fact that he'd ignored the Viper's poisoned tongue and simply pushed through negotiations to the North's benefit at the cost of his own pride had great meaning to his people. It only helped cement his position, and with it, Robb's that the Gods had seen fit to Mark her husband's bastard for a Prince's wife.

 

_ The Marked are never bastards, however, for the Gods want them and honor them. _ Cat ignored her own Septa's voice in her head and tried not to think of her current situation. Instead she turned back to Sansa and led her to the table where she'd spread out her own household books to start explaining more deeply how one ran a large castle's household. She concentrated on the kitchens themselves, as Gwyn's absence left a gap behind in their organization and she was still working to balance that out.

 

That girl had been terribly annoying at times, and Cat was infuriated by her occasional bouts of insolence, but her story was such Cat couldn't find it in her heart to hate her. She did feel slighted that her attempts to befriend and mother the poor child had been rebuffed so harshly when Gwyn first arrived. That she'd insisted on befriending the -  _ Lyarra _ made it worse.

 

_ Humility _ , Cat reminded herself, sadly adding three more familiar words. _ Family, Duty, Honor. _ If the Gods were punishing anyone, she decided, it wasn't Ned. Her husband was all that was kind and honorable. No, to her shame, Cat believed she knew who was being punished and who was being rewarded, and didn't think the eerie gods of the trees had anything to do with it.

 

That night, after she'd seen Sansa off to bed and tucked in Rickon and dealt with another quiet tantrum over the fact that he and Sansa were all of their family current in Winterfell, Lady Catelyn went to pray in her Sept. The building was, to her, the shining monument to her husband's love. Sometimes she thought differently. In her darker moments she sometimes wondered if he hadn't built it out of guilt over Lyarra's presence and existence, but she was trying to stop that.

 

_ Humility _ . Cat prayed to the Crone for wisdom and she reminded herself with brutal honesty that Ned hadn't wanted to marry her anymore than she'd wanted him. He wasn't the handsome brother. He wasn't the daring brother. He hadn't been meant to be Lord of Winterfell. She had wanted Brandon.

 

A properly devout woman would be understanding. A lady would love her husband and know he'd meant her no grief. If - if Ned had loved another, before her, then Cat told herself it was no worse than her love for Brandon. Lyarra had looked younger than her Robb when she'd first seen the babe, but that could have been because the child was sick. Bringing the babe up from Dorne had nearly killed the child more than once, according to what Cat had overheard. It was possible he'd never really dishonored her. Ned wouldn't speak of it. Maybe a night of passion with a love he knew he'd have to give up to win the war, just before their wedding…

 

It did Cat no good. No matter how she thought of it, forgiveness didn't come. She felt nettled, angry, and her pride stung at the idea. A little voice in the back of her head wailed in grief about what she could possibly lack. Was she not beautiful enough for her husband? Were her manners lacking? Had she in any way not fulfilled her duties?

 

_ You weren't her, and he wasn't Brandon.  _ Cat chose to remind herself of this brutally. It was a settled and intentional thought, rooted in place by sheer determination. Cat would not keep doing the same thing endlessly. She wouldn't worry a wound until it drove her mad in grief.

 

She wouldn't end up like Lysa.

 

"Sister, forgive me." Cat murmured softly in prayer. "I should have known. I should have helped you, and instead I ignored you. Instead I felt better than you when you were only a lovesick girl. Forgive me for not protecting you, forgive me for forgetting you."

 

Her father had not written her back in response to her letter. Edmure had, and Cat had locked herself in her room for the day to deal with her grief and shame. According to the little brother Cat barely knew, their father had only admitted to the tales written of in Petyr's deathbed confession once, and that was in a rage-filled rant when the raven had arrived from Lord Walder Frey to sympathize with Lord Hoster about the embarrassment one's children could bring you. Her father, already weakening with some slow illness, had ended up bedridden for days afterward. When he'd risen, he'd refused to discuss it. Lord Hoster hadn't weakened on that silence since, according to his son.

 

It hurt knowing that it was  _ true _ . Cat had always laughed off Little Petyr's crush on her. The short, slight young man who'd fostered with them had always seemed as much a pet in a way, as a little brother. He'd been ever so clever and so willing to join in all of their games. Cat had enjoyed the way that he trailed after her, and thought the way that Lysa trailed after him was cute.

 

_ "I'm no great lady, Lady Stark, but I am a lady nonetheless. If you want a pet, may I suggest a nice lapdog?" _

 

Gwyn Parren's words, some of the first she'd spoken at more than a jittery whisper, raced through Cat's mind and left her a mix of contrite and seething. No matter what the Lannisters had left the girl thinking, that was not how she'd viewed the only foster child she'd managed to convince Ned to take into their house. Lady Gwyn was supposed to be how she convinced him to lean on his banners and bring more of their children into the household by demonstrating how well Cat herself could guide the child. Instead Ned had just laughed it all off as a strong-willed girl-child being herself, as his sister had once been, and his big heart had reached out to absorb another orphan.

 

It was one of the reasons why Cat loved her husband so. It was one of the best things about her husband, that he could love so freely even as he had difficulty expressing it clearly. It was annoying and frustrating in the extreme when it hindered Lady Stark's efforts to get him to think of the political realities behind their children's' lives though.

 

Politics was a refuge for Cat's thoughts even in bad times. It allowed her to divorce her personal feelings from what was going on. Not for long, for Cat felt things strongly, but at least for a while, she could walk out of her Sept, dress for bed and curl up in the empty but warm sheets and furs her husband wasn't sharing with her, and just think.

 

Right now, House Tully was severely embarrassed, but that could be countered. Her father might not be talking of it, but he was already acting on the deathbed letters that Petyr had sent out to so many Houses. Cat's father now had Edmure playing a stronger, more visible role than he was. It was Edmure he sent out to deal with the brigands who now seemed to be everywhere thanks to the plague's many evils. It was Edmure that he'd deputed to put those foul weirwood rumors down.

 

It hurt to know that her father's reputation was so destroyed and her House's words mocked. Cat could deal with that, however, and would keep her head held high in public while she prayed for understanding, humility, and guidance in private. Her sister had been shamed, perhaps to some extent by her own folly, but the fact remained that duty and honor dictated that Lord Hoster should have arranged a marriage between Lysa and Petyr as Lysa had wanted. Family dictated that he should have helped Lysa to hide her shame and get on with her life in some happy way. Instead Cat knew now that her father had cleansed her sister of the babe, nearly killing her and likely damaging her womb in some way given all of the griefs that followed in Lysa's unwanted marriage to Lord Arryn.

 

Cat shivered in her bed as she stared at the fire. Sleep eluded her. What if those rumors made their way North? Cat knew she should have talked to Ned of them before he left, but she hadn't gotten Edmure's letter back confirming anything after the Viper had thrown that vile hint at her in the hallway before Ned had left. She hadn't wanted to damage her family in her husband's eyes, and knew that it would. Nothing was taken more seriously than kinslaying in the North, and there was always a sort of open debate about whether ending a pregnancy counted as such.

 

Her thoughts led her to worry for her eldest. Robb was out, going from keep to holdfast and holdfast to castle. Before Ned had left, Cat had been glowing with pride that he trusted his son to do a full audit of winter stores and travel the North to confer on what was discovered by auditing the weirwoods amidst the North's forests. So far, Cat had been relieved; she'd had one letter back from Robb and he'd said that neither House Glover nor any house beholden to them had found any evidence of weirwood saplings being poached.

 

On the other hand, she fretted. Robb was so young and he was out there alone. True, she trusted most of her husband's bannermen as loyal. Most was not all, however. There were the Boltons to consider, and being wary of them was all but part of the Stark family motto. Then the Ryswells had their own long-nursed grudges. Cat would have preferred to be with her son, but knew why she could not. Besides, Rickon and Sansa were having enough trouble adapting to the fact that Bran, Lyarra, Arya, and Robb were all absent. The fact that it might yet be years before they saw the first three again didn't help. Still, she was sure her eldest was fine.

 

* * *

 

Wind whipped, wet and icy, across Robb Stark's cheeks as he stared north into the Bay of Ice. Whitecaps were everywhere. The sea was rough. It fitted his mood perfectly and he savored the sting of his cloak whipping against his legs in the wind.

 

"My Lord, please tell me you are not brooding upon a cliff like some silly southron song about a poncy knight missing his lady or somesuch."

 

Robb jumped and lurched slightly towards the edge of the tall cliff. There was a feminine gasp of fear behind him. Greywind, who'd been standing at his side, set his teeth into Robb's cloak and pulled him backwards towards safety. He promptly toppled backwards onto his arse. He felt his ears reddening even as he accepted his humiliation as the lesser of two evils.

 

"Lady Aislinn." Robb got up with as much dignity as he could muster with his direwolf licking at his ears in worry. Shoving Graywind away he brushed grass and rock dust from the seat of his pants and bowed. "I hope I haven't disturbed you, my lady."

 

"You've stolen my favorite brooding spot, but I suppose I can forgive you."

 

Robb felt his ears cool a little and offered up a small smile in return. Lady Aislinn Forrester was the only daughter of the current Lord Forrester, and he'd been thrown much into her and her brother's company since he'd arrived three days before. The former's company was by no means awful, but Robb found he appreciated the buffer that her brother presented. The future Lord Forrester was obviously as loathe to give up his sister to even the future Lord of Winterfell (should Robb entertain such ideas, which he wasn't yet entertaining in any direction), as he had been to give up Lyarra. It meant that he could enjoy being around a future bannerman his own age, and the lady, in their own right without worrying about being honor bound to marry anyone because he hadn't prevented a lady from being forward in front of others.

 

Lady Aislinn was also no hardship to look at, Robb allowed. Every inch as tall as he was, Lady Aislinn had long, slightly wavy black hair she liked to twine into two braids bound with white ribbon in reference to her house's colors. Currently Robb couldn't help noticing that her high-collared black dress followed the same theme, but only because of the stark white of the weirwood bow she was carrying in front of her.

 

"Did you come up here to hunt?" He asked curiously and got a hint of laughter instead.

 

"No, but I'm afraid your friend has me nervous. I think he covets my bow far more than myself."

 

Robb had to chuckle with her at that. She did have an easy laugh. He found he relaxed slightly in its presence, and nodded in agreement.

 

"Theon is jealous of your weapon."

 

"Theon is furious because I didn't give ground on our archery contest, and thinks insisting it was all due to having a better bow will soothe his pride."

 

"Theon is an idiot." Robb grinned. "He's still the best friend I've ever had."

 

"He's randy, but not awful."

 

Robb openly laughed at that assessment of Theon's character and stepped further away from the cliff, offering the lady his arm out of habit. She rolled her eyes at him and smoothed her hands nervously over her skirt.

 

"You missed the evening meal."

 

"There was too much to do." Robb shook his head. "Your father and I went over their findings, but I wanted to ride out and check that report of disturbed earth personally, just to be sure something hadn't been missed."

 

"No-one's touched a weirwood on our land without permission since times out of mind." Lady Aislinn replied, nettled. "It was naught more than a badger burrow, I'm sure."

 

"Bear den, actually. Would a new rug cool your ire at my unintended accusation, my Lady?"

She blushed a little and Robb realized his jape could have been taken as flirting with alarm.

 

"If I want a bearskin rug, I'll pick a fight with a Mormont."

 

"Isn't that a saying for if you want to  _ feed _ a bear?"

 

"Lady Lyra and I are old friends. I've naught to fear from bears in these parts." Lady Aislinn's warm, ringing laugh showed him no harm was done and she turned and pointed. "You can actually see Bear Island if the day is clear enough. Not that today is clear enough, but on a hypothetical day when the weather in the North is actually kind, then you can see it.  _ Oh _ ! But I had a real reason for being out here. I came to fetch you?"

 

"You came to fetch the future Warden of the North?" Robb was a little impressed by her boldness. He was also impressed by the curves revealed on her tall frame when the wind moved her cloak aside and pushed her dress close against her body and her long, long legs.

 

"I came to fetch Lord Theon Greyjoy's best friend. Last I saw of him, my brother had him in a headlock."

 

Lord Keavan Forrester was a head taller than Robb, broad through the shoulders, and inclined to be serious without being humorless. Just as Lyarra's melancholy pushed Robb to make her laugh, Lady Aislinn seemed to do the same for her elder brother. Robb was later surprised to learn that the lady was actually born right in the middle of the small gap that likely existed between Robb and Lyarra's ages. As it was, he was more concerned that Theon's japing about the lady's beauty might have gotten him into real trouble with Lord Keavan's quick temper.

 

Theon was terrifying with a bow and no slouch with a sword, but Robb had learned why Lord Keavan's morningstar was widely feared during a friendly bout this morning. The man fought like the Others were upon him. Not surprising when it was known that the current Lord Forrester's two uncles had died fleeing like a coward from a charge of mounted knights at the Trident. Like his father before him, Lord Keavan had a lot to live up to and a lot to make up for to fully restore his family's reputation.

 

"You've come to the right place." Robb groaned, striding back towards the path through the thick woods that would lead him towards House Forrester's keep.

 

Bent Tree Keep wasn't a great castle, but it was impressively built. A great rocky prominence jutted up in a sharp little valley between two ridges, and on that hundred foot tall rock in the midst of neatly cleared fields that Bent Tree Keep was built on. All around the foot of the stone hill, a tall wall stood, enclosing the weirwood that surrounded the keep. A deep ditch filled with fireharded wooden spikes stood at the edge of that wall.

 

Atop the rock, another wall stood around a large stone hall and several other stone buildings with the high, angled roofs common in the more remote parts of the North. It wasn't a rich keep, but it was a tidy, well-run place that had a surprising amount of support considering it was beholden to House Glover. Wood carvings were everywhere, and looking at it Robb felt the small smile Lady Aislinn had put on his face fade away entirely.

 

"Why the frown? Unless you're trying to look more like your father, in which case I must tell you that you have Lord Stark's smile."

 

"Really?" Robb was shocked out of his frown and almost jabbed Greywind, who'd insinuated himself under his hand for some reassurance and a pat or two, in the ear. The direwolf smeared his cold, wet, nose across Robb's glove in response. Robb scratched his neck in apology. "I'm told I don't look much like my father."

 

"You don't, much, but you've got his smile and you've got his cheekbones. When you smile it makes your jaw look longer, too." Lady Aislinn told him earnestly. "I only noticed because he spent so much time frowning at your sister's wedding that when Lord Stark smiled, it stuck in my mind. I look a lot like my mother, too, though I've my father's coloring."

 

"I didn't notice you at Lyarra's wedding."

 

"My father's not a great man, but he has too much dignity to throw me at you like a battleaxe the way some of the other Lords were. I thought Lord Umber's daughter was going to squash you out on the dancefloor."

 

"Ah." Robb groaned, then had to snicker. "So did I. Honestly, if women were allowed to propose I'd have been afraid to refuse. Did you see her bend that iron bar?"

 

"I think she was trying to impress you."

 

"I was afraid she was going to wrap it around my wrists to secure me and then throw me over her shoulder and run off like a Wildling."

 

Lady Aislinn's laughter, which which Robb thought he was accustomed to, turned out not to be some common thing with only one side. To his delight he listened as she burst into bell-like gales of mirth, clutching her sides as her blue-gray eyes watered and having to hand him her bow and fish around her person for a handkerchief. Robb, whose mother had raised him to always have such on his person, provided her his own, with a sudden feeling of being successfully gallant for the first time in his life.

 

The feeling was disrupted when Keavan Forrester and Theon Greyjoy came rolling out of the door to one building or another. Keavan  _ did _ have Theon in a headlock, but Theon was holding his own well by laying blows into the taller man's unprotected ribs. The younger man prevaled, however, when he lifted Theon bodily over his head with a bellow and dumped him into the large water trough a moment later.

 

"I would thank you not to murder Lord Theon, Lord Keavan." Robb stated with every ounce of the cold authority his father was so good at that he could muster. To his surprise and pleasure Keavan looked abashed and stood up straighter, brushing his own wavy black hair out of his face with a contrite expression.

 

"I wouldn't murder a guest, Lord Robb, we're just having a friendly disagreement about how a man should address a lady."

 

"Theon has a lot of those." Robb observed and shot his friend a quelling look.

 

Theon glared for a moment before taking in the fact that Aislinn was laughing and dabbing her eyes with Robb's handkerchief; the little flowers Sansa had decided to embroider all along the edges gave its identity away. After meeting Robb's eyes and finding the blue of them exasperated and yet still the glare of a friend rather than anything else, Theon stood languidly from the watery bed he'd been dropped into and shook water from his hair as though he'd intended to be thrown into the thing.

 

"Friendly disagreements involving a little light bodily harm are a treasured part of Ironborn culture." Theon japed, then bowed gallantly to Lady Aislinn and smiled wryly at her brother. "For the sake of peace, however, we'll call my lesson learned. I meant to no harm, Lord Keavan. My sense of humor got away with me."

 

"Well," Lord Keavan's face cleared, his temper apparently as quick to settle as it was to boil over. He looked at his sister for guidance. "If my sister forgives you, then how can I not?"

 

"I see nothing to forgive." Lady Aislinn smiled warmly at Theon, prompting a feeling Robb couldn't identify to skitter around the hinterlands of his mind. "After all, he can't help it if he was dropped on his head as a babe."

 

It was Robb's turn to laugh as Theon looked affronted, but a few moments later found them all in the warm Great Hall again, seated around a table with a spread of cold fowl, butter, and fresh bread. Lord Keavan produced ale and tankards cooled to an icy chill in a cold room. Lady Aislinn surprised him yet again by producing a beautiful weirwood lap harp and treating them to a few songs.

 

"Did my singing displease you, Lord Robb?"

 

Robb, who'd fallen into a black humor, jolted out of it and shook his head.

 

"No, my lady."

 

"Doesn't she have the finest voice you've ever heard?" Keavan Forrester bragged proudly and Robb felt a pang that translated into a sad smile as he took a long drag of his ale; Theon had abandoned them a few minutes prior for a willing serving maid.

 

"Your sister's voice is fine, but you never had the pleasure of hearing L- Princess Lyarra sing."

 

"Aye, I understand then." Lord Keavan agreed and his sister nodded, yawning into her hand and then rising and waving for her brother and Robb to stay seated.

 

"The friendly squid lord is occupied, Keavan, and he seems not the sort to pester a lady well-armed to deal with him. I'll see myself to bed. You do your duty to our guests."

 

Lady Aislinn allowed Robb to bow over her hand with a warm smile, then left the hall for her own quarters. He also noticed a quiet maid was waiting for her at the end of the hall, silent and unobtrusive in all her movements. Robb approved.

 

"I'm sorry you lost your sister so soon."

 

Keavan Forrester was an earnest, plain-speaking man even amidst a kingdom of them. With his black hair, fair skin, and ice blue eyes, he looked as Northern as you could want. The shape of his jaw was different, and his nose was a little short for true Northern looks, but his coloring granted him favors that Robb's coloring denied him. Despite that, Robb found himself thinking that he might have found a way to earn the strong support of at least one bannermen at his very first stop upon his journey through the North. It was heartening considering that this was the first truly weighty responsibility Robb's Lord Father had ever given him.

 

"I'm afraid of the day my father decides it's time for Aislinn to wed." Keavan went on, shaking his head and refilling both their tankards. "You've undoubtedly heard tales of our mother."

 

Robb nodded, wincing. He'd heard of the Lady Mairin brought up a few times during Lyarra's wedding. Always it was used as an anecdote of the bad things that followed when one chose a Southron wife. The tale was right up with that of Jorah Mormont and his golden bride.

 

Lady Mairin's father had been from a cadet branch of House Osgrey. Not having great options to wed off his daughters because of bad finances, his daughters had been unusually comely. He'd sent out ravens searching for husbands for them, and found young Lord Norton Forrester.

Keavan and Aislinn's father had been young and newly risen to his position as Lord Forrester. Fearing that marrying with the daughter of one of the clans he was surrounded by would leave the others angry with him, he'd wanted to marry outside any possible dispute. He'd also wanted a beautiful wife, and by the standards of a second-tier Northern lord, Lady Mairin's dowry wasn't half-bad.

 

Lord Norton wed Lady Mairin in a Godswood. Apparently that was the first in a series of events that were the death knell of all happiness in the family. The current Lord Forrester's marriage was so awful that he'd approved of his wife's decision to forswear her marriage vows and become a Septa in the south some decade before.

 

"I don't want a marriage like that." Keavan stated with the kind of blunt insistence that came from the naturally frank and the slightly drunk; he appeared to be both and Robb realized that he should also likely not finish the tankard before him. "I won't wed if that's my only option, and I won't lose my sister to something like that. I've never been so thankful as when I realized she wasn't Marked, but I'm still afraid Father will fear he has no choice but to wed her for the House's good."

 

Robb's first instinct was to repeat what he knew was true. Lyarra had said to him. His mother reiterated it. When Lady Stark and Lyarra agreed you knew it was true, but he was also aware that it was politically dangerous to say things like _ , 'All ladies deserve their own household'. _ He was the objective of too many hopes to give any falsely. It would be irresponsible, and Robb was not going to shirk his duty.

 

"I know." Robb said instead, commiserating with the other man easily. "My sister, Lyarra, has sent me a letter by raven on her journey south. I got it shortly before I left Winterfell. She seems happy, and I'm relieved that she write that she's learning to be happy with Prince Oberyn. He's not - well, he's as annoying as they - he's…"

 

"A snake?"

 

"But not bad for a Viper." Robb allowed, snorting into his tankard and deciding it would be rude not to finish a drink given by his host. Keavan had the grace to laugh at his joke and nod.

 

"He wasn't properly respectful of Lord Stark." The other young man frowned, but went on more charitably. "We all know why, though. If anyone harmed a hair on Aislinn's head, they'd be lucky that I was naught but rude to them, even if all they were doing was unwillingly protecting the cowards."

 

"Aye, and I'll skin that snake like a Bolton if he makes my sister cry." Robb swore right back, then sighed and patted where the letter sat in his pocket. "Still, she seems happy. She always wanted to see more of the world, and she's getting to see most of Westeros on the journey south. He's even offered to take her to Essos - not that I want her going to such a place. Still, at least he told her that it's unlikely his responsibilities in Dorne will allow it. That'll help me sleep at night."

 

"So…" Keavan cleared his throat. "About Lord Greyjoy."

 

"Theon just likes to jape, he wouldn't dishonor a lady." Robb insisted, though he felt a little bit like a liar in saying it. He was sure Theon wouldn't be so incautious of his own position to dishonor a  _ Northern _ lady, so at least it was mostly true. "We'll be leaving in two days time, as it is. I'll make sure he doesn't leave my sight. I know how fragile a lady's reputation can be."

 

"Thank you, My Lord."

 

Robb stood at that point, gladdened by the real respect in the young man's voice. He was surprised when Keavan rose and, on leading him to his quarters, made his own offer.

 

"I've little enough to do here right now. Father never leaves and Aislinn helps him by running the house." The young lord went on. "If you'd like your party to expand, I'd be honored to join you."

 

Robb agreed quickly. Having a future bannerman of his generation riding with him was exactly the kind of message he'd wanted to send. His mother had even suggested it, but if he asked, the impact would be destroyed. By volunteering, Keavan had set things up perfectly. The fact that Robb liked him just made it better. Now all he had to do was keep Theon and Keavan Forrester from murdering each other.

 

* * *

 

"Edwyn you  _ idiot _ ." Stevron Frey cried out in alarm as he saw his eldest grandson being brought in on a stretcher as he rushed as well as he could through heavy rain across a small courtyard.

 

Edwyn Frey, third in line to inherit Lordship of the Crossing, lay sprawled in a muddy mess on a stretcher carried between two of his cousins. A second stretcher carrying a far more mangled body that Stevron could not identify was being carried directly behind them. Limping between the two and wearing a scowl smeared with mud, was Black Walder Frey. Stevron's second grandson wore such an expression of fury that Stevron might have wondered if he was the source of such injuries, had Stevron not just sent him out in an attempt to prevent just this from happening.

 

Stevron couldn't help reflecting that the problem with having so many offspring about was how your attention was split. There were always so many nieces and nephews, little siblings, and cousins around that your children got lost in the shuffle. Then, by the time they were old enough that you didn't dismiss half of what they did as the antics of children, you learnt your mistakes too late. By that point your heirs were a disappointment and there was nothing to be done for it but live a long life and grit your teeth while they made fools of themselves.

 

Take his eldest son, Ryman, for example. Stevron had grieved when his eldest boy had died of the plague. Fat, stupid, and mean though Ryman had been, Stevron had wished his son a long life. When he'd died, though, the part of Stevron that had been waiting forty years for his father to hand the Crossing over to him had been  _ relieved _ . Ryman would have made a horrible lord of any rank or title.

 

Then there was Edwyn. Furious, cold, hateful Edwyn was many things but he'd never been stupid before. Stevron had held out real hope for his eldest grandson, but time had proven him wrong there as well. Fear of being usurped by the younger brother Edwyn had always treated poorly, and who'd grown into a far more dangerous man than Edwyn was, had corrupted his son. Worse, it had made Edwyn  _ desperate _ . If he hadn't been so damned desperate to earn his great-grandfather's acclaim, mayhaps Edwyn wouldn't have gone along with the scheme Emmon and Aenys had cooked up.

 

"Oh for fuck's sake." Black Walder reached out and steadied Stevron as the man of past-fifty nearly slipped. "Grandfather, be  _ careful _ ."

 

"What  _ happened _ ?" Stevron asked, even though he was fairly sure he knew.

 

There were few reasons to be out in the middle of the night in a violent thunderstorm with the river on the rise. The castles were set well and high above the worst flood marks. There was no reason to leave them, save one, and that would have drawn Edwyn from the castle.

 

“Shit happened.” Black Walder spat.

 

"If the plague hadn't gotten Emmon on its way out, I'd kill my brother myself." Stevron seethed quietly, then let a breath out as he sought and found a pulse at his son's throat. "Call the maester, get him settled. Who is this?"

 

"We're not sure, yet, that big sycamore's roots gave in and came down on him. His face is caved in. We won't know till the body's washed off; could be any one of a dozen born ten years or so after I was." Black Walder shook his head furiously, sending water dripping from his lank black hair. "Had the idiots not taken down that hedge by the field the erosion wouldn't have been so bad."

 

The field where Emmon's little plot to grow the red dye trees from the Westerlands had been too visible. A dozen different ideas had been floated for how and when to change this, but in the end, the storm had made it pointless. While they hadn't been able to stop Prince Oberyn's party from leaving, they had made sure he did his riding on the opposite bank. Stevron wasn't sure if that would be enough to keep him from noticing how they'd placated their peasants with young 'weirwood' trees, but that was less important than hiding the proof that they were growing the things. Moreover, what were the chances that a Prince of Dorne, let alone one so arrogant as the Red Viper, was going to chat with the smallfolk?

 

"Come with me." Stevron grimly led his most morally bankrupt, but also most useful, grandson inside the castle.

 

He called for hot water and a large basin. Then he sent for clean clothes for Black Walder. He sat and waited patiently, letting his grief and his temper shift themselves so he could concentrate on the reality of their situation. With his father too busy shopping for his next young wife, and the rest of the House too occupied jockeying for position in the power gaps left by the plague deaths, it was up to Stevron to make sure House Frey didn't collapse under the weight of one supposedly good idea.

 

Edmure Tully was less than a day's ride away, as he'd last heard, and only a quickly passing storm was there to delay him. Even the flooding wasn't on the proper side of the river to do House Frey any good. They had more than four-hundred armed men about in the service of Lord Stark of Winterfell and the Red Viper of Dorne, and both were now their guests.

 

Meanwhile it had been Emmon's brilliant idea to grow a tree from the Westerlands and sell it in the Reach as weirwood saplings. While the plan had made a fortune, Stevron was kept up at night worrying about what would happen when it was discovered. His father thought it was grand to blame it on Hoster Tully when their Lord Paramount's reputation was already in the gutter thanks to Baelish's deathbed confession by raven, but Stevron was not so sure. They were only safe as long as they were undiscovered, and how could anyone assume they wouldn't get caught? Religion, especially now, was to hostile a subject to toy with. You might as well poke an angry bear with a stick and assume all would go well.

 

"Did they accomplish anything?" Stevron finally asked as Black Walder finishing cleaning up and sat opposite him and accepted a full glass of dark ale.

 

His father kept such a close, miserly hold on the wine cellars that most of the family had grown to prefer ale. It was better than drinking the horse piss Lord Walder considered serviceable daily wine. Stevron himself sipped at a large tankard of hot tea; his kidney stones were bothering him and his Maester blamed it on years of bad wine.

 

"No, but you knew they wouldn't. That's why you told them not to."

 

"Details, please."

 

Black Walder nodded at his grandfather, and went on.

 

"You know what the field's like. Now that they've torn down the barrier hedges it's easy to see. My _idiot_ _brother_ thought to cover it up by having blackberry canes from down by the river pulled up and then wrapped around the saplings to hide them. That field was just grafted, you know, and is only knee high."

 

"Yes, I know."

 

"Well, if it weren't for the fact that the whole thing is waist deep in sucking mud, it might have worked." Black Walder went on, his lips twisting. "They got mired down. We lost a servant into the mud, he fell, got sucked under, and we couldn't even find the body. As it was, we got everyone else out, but that tree went over and struck… whoever that turns out to be."

 

"What happened to your brother?"

 

That was the question Stevron was almost afraid to ask. He knew Black Walder coveted Edwyn's inheritance. That said, to the Freys family always came first. Even if you didn't like them, even if you hated them, they were family.

 

"He pulled himself up into that dead tree and stood on a branch after he lost his boots to the mud and saw that servant trip and drown. Lightning struck him." Black Walder swallowed, his face finally showing some distress. "Damnedest thing I've ever saw. I was yelling at him to get down, telling him to ignore the thorns and walk on the spread blackberry brambles like I was, and the next moment, this great tongue of light races down. Yellow and purple and white flashed, then Edwyn just jerked, like he was dancing mid-air. Next thing I know, he's falling. It was all I could do to drag him out of the mud at all."

 

Stevron put his face in his hands and breathed. When he felt one of Black Walder's sword-roughened hands settled on his shoulder, he reached up and squeezed it. Black Walder was not a good man. It was possible that his grandson loved no-one else in the world but himself. Still, Stevron contented himself that his grandson respected him, and there was a fondness there. Perhaps, should they be so unlucky that Edwyn died, he could have time to guide Black Walder into a better place before he handed the Crossing over to him. Stevron didn't want to live to see ninety; there was a truth to the idea you could live too long. Lords should never be too young or too old, he'd found.

 

"Grandfather…"

 

"What are the chances the unidentified one is Aenys?"

 

"None, he didn't come out, I'm sure of it."

 

"Good." Stevron breathed out and nodded once, swallowing. "Grandson, what is the first thing we're taught in House Frey?"

 

_ "Family First." _

 

"Yes." Stevron stood up and took his cane in hand, moving over to stare at the glass in the window and the barrage of heavy raindrops being hurled at it by the wind. "Tell me, what will happen to our family if Edmure Tully and the Lord of the North discover that some of us have been selling false weirwoods in the south? Do you think they will accept the explanation that we all are not responsible for the actions of a few?"

 

"Fuck, no!" Black Walder snorted at the mere thought. "The Tullys don't think we're fit to piss on, and Hoster Tully's wanted rid of us since the Rebellion. Half of us will lose our heads, the other half will swing, and the hypocrite will turn the women out and give the Twins away to some other favorite."

 

"Exactly." Stevron nodded, and closed his eyes as he came to terms with the hardest decision he'd made in his life. "What I'm about to ask you to do is for the good of the family as a  _ whole _ ."

 

"Yes?"

 

"Tomorrow, Grandson, I want you to pick a fight with Aenys in the training yard where Prince Oberyn spars. Don't worry about Aenys not being there. I'll see to it."

 

"Do you want me to…?" Black Walder frowned, but nodded slowly.

 

"Don't hurt your great-uncle badly." Stevron stifled his guilt at saying it. "Make it look real, however. I'll intervene, if the Red Viper does not."

 

"He won't, he doesn't like any of us."

 

"I wonder why?" Stevron snorted, then shook his head and ran a hand over his bald crown. "The point is, I need you to pick a fight with Aenys. If you antagonize a few others, all the better. Then, and this is  _ important _ . I want you to ride west."

 

" _ West _ ." Black Walder was now looking at him carefully. "Last reports had Edmure Tully west of here."

 

"Miss him, do not meet him, but end up somewhere witnesses can credibly say you were looking for him. I'm going to give you a letter."

 

"What will be in it?"

 

"Nothing of importance. What's important is that you make sure that it's seen to have come from me while you ' _ look for _ ' Edmure Tully. Is that clear?"

 

"Yes." Black Walder sat back, his dark eyes alight. "You're setting Aenys up, aren't you?"

 

"If this is to work I'll have to set a lot of our own up." Stevron was frank and regretful. "We'll have to placate the North, and we'll have to remove my father from power to placate Hoster Tully. What matters is, that when the dust has settled, House Frey still holds the Crossing. We haven't built all of this to have it torn down by wolves and trout."

 

Stevron was proud that his grandson didn't suggest murdering their guests. Ignoring the dishonor of it, which stuck in Stevron's craw, there was the reality of what that would do. If they killed his best friend, the King himself would come down upon them like his famed warhammer. The North would rise up and smash them. Hoster Tully would call his other banners with glee. Even the Houses that they'd married into would likely jump at the chance, as there was the possibility that they could be gifted the Crossing themselves because of their marriage if they were on Hoster Tully's good side at the right moment.

 

"Setting up Aenys is a good start, but how to do you plan to prevent Honorable Ned Stark for putting that great sword to all of our necks, Grandfather?"

 

"I'm going to have to hope that Prince Oberyn's sense of political expediency leaves him satisfied enough with having our House owe him that he'll help us keep the Lord of the North in a reasonable frame of mind."

 

"... All the Viper does is bait Lord Stark." Black Walder looked at him like he was an idiot and Stevron raised his eyebrows.

 

"Yes," Stevron agreed impatiently, "And the Wolf Lord lets him. All, in case you weren't too busy to notice, while doting on the three children he brought with him. He'll value the opinion of his daughter, and for all that she's cold, the girl obviously likes her husband well enough. If she didn't, her father would be doing more than glaring. Beyond that, Stark is too honorable to ignore kin, and the man's his goodson now. Stark's also not a fool and will acknowledge the same of the Prince. Need you other reasons? If you do, then think on the fact that a man with the Red Viper's reputation is the one most likely to listen to reason and compromise, and consider just what kind of fucking situation we're in right now."

 

Black Walder finished his ale, nodded once to his grandfather, and rose. Stevron hoped that his grandson slept well tonight as he got up from his chair. Slowly, with all his joints paining him due to the rain, he went out to find out from the Maester if Edwyn would live, be addled, or what have you. He also decided, firmly, that there would be no more mucking about with any Gods or their prerogatives. Some unhappy deity was taking its wrath out on House Frey, and it had to stop.

 

* * *

 

"I'm destined to be thwarted by the men of House Stark tonight, am I not?"

 

Lyarra muffled her smile of amusement in Bran's auburn curls just as she listened to her husband's words being muffled by her own hair. They had ended up making love on the carpet in front of the fire. Lyarra had the friction burns on her knees to prove it, thank you, and confirmation that her husband hadn't been wrong about trying new ways to do things.

 

Afterward, however, they'd both cleaned up and returned to bed. It had still been relatively early and the storm was loud enough to keep them both awake. As such, she'd hardly been opposed to continuing what they'd started in front of the fire after her letters were complete, only at a more leisurely pace.

 

Then Bran had come knocking at their door. Let in by a mischievously smiling Ser Daemon. Lyarra wanted no part in knowing the details of her husband's past there. The knight had definitely looked falsely innocent when faced with Oberyn's glare at the interruption, however.

 

"Mmm?" Bran murmured from where he was curled up against her front and Lyarra nudged her husband's shin with her heel.

 

Oberyn had ended up sleeping on his side, curled around behind her like spoons nestled in a drawer. Lyarra didn't mind that, as if he slept on his side he wouldn't snore at all. Meanwhile the bed was large enough and comfortable enough to nicely accommodate the snuggly little redheaded boy along with both its current occupants.

 

A bright light flashed in the window. It was followed by a loud crack of thunder close by. Bran twitched in his sleep and made a softly frightened noise and Lyarra snuggled her baby brother closer. She felt her eyes fill with tears as it suddenly hit her that this might be the last time she was there to be the big sister who comforted Bran in a storm. He wouldn't even have Sansa with him when he went to squire for the Blackfish at the Bloody Gate. Did they have bad storms in the Vale of Arryn? Lyarra didn't even know.

 

"You're sad again."

 

The whisper was barely audible, but Lyarra heard it as much as she felt the brush of his lips against her ear as her husband spoke. The mustache he'd begun to almost idly grow over the journey brushed her ear and she shivered at the feel of it.

 

"Who will he go to when it storms if I'm in Dorne and he's in the Vale?" Lyarra whispered back. "Robb won't be there, or Sansa."

 

" _ Ah _ ." Oberyn kissed her neck, gently, and with understanding rather than passion.

 

They fell into silence then. After a moment he shifted, and one lean, strong arm draped fully over Lyarra. To her surprise he rested it over Bran as well, and when her brother shivered as thunder pealed out over the Riverlands four times in quick succession, the Red Viper soothingly rubbed his hand over the little boy's back.

 

"We've few thunderstorms in Dorne." He spoke into the quiet where sleep wouldn't quite come. "It does not rain often, and when it does, we rejoice. Well, unless you're stuck in the Red Mountains. I will tell you about a time I foolishly attempted to race a flash flood once. Do not due that in the Vale of Arryn, Lord Bran."

 

Bran peeked out of where he'd buried his face in Lyarra's chest, and blinked blearily at being shaken from sleep by the storm. She noted that her moon's blood had to be coming on. Her breasts were a little sore.

 

"We do have sandstorms, though."

 

"How can sand storm?" Bran asked, distracted from his fear and speaking in the same sleep-deprived whisper they were.

 

"Ah, well…"

 

Lyarra drifted off to sleep smiling as she listened to Bran's breath ease out. Her husband's voice, so often pitched to provoke or seduce, had fallen into a soothing sort of whispering lull. Like some magic potion mixed from sound and darkness, it blended with the patterning of water on the glass in the windows. It was inexpressibly soothing, and it was familiar. Lyarra's own father had spoken in just that tone a thousand times when soothing her or Robb from some nightmare or another in their nursery days.

 

"You're a good father." Lyarra whispered, sure even though she'd never seen nor met any of the infamous Sand Snakes. She felt a well of affection for herself that surprised her, and a flash of seemingly endless love branching off in another direction like the river they were now sleeping over and knew she'd caught some tiny edge of the feeling he had for his daughters.

 

"Of all the things I pursue in life, that has been my first goal." Oberyn whispered into her hair, his own tone suggesting he stood on the edge of the sleep he'd lulled Bran into falling into a few minutes prior. "You will be a good mother, Lyarra. I have no qualms about sharing my daughters with you, or those you will yet give me."

 

Lyarra fell asleep a few moments later. Her emotions were a tangled mix of love and apprehension and some growing hint of longing. Though her husband insisted that he only threw girls, and she couldn't doubt his certainty when he'd fathered eight of them and no sons, Lyarra couldn't help her dreams. In them there was a little boy, silhouetted in the moonlight and playing tag with Ghost on a great sandy stretch of beach. Strange trees stood tall in the background, and soft drifts like snow that had to be sand dunes surrounded them for miles. It was a good dream, but she was too embarrassed to share it.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fight and a much needed talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mentions of nudity and sexual things. No actual sex. Violence. 
> 
> HUGE thanks again to Madrigal_in_Training for encouraging me to write this and Beta Reading for me. Really, I just send her chapter 20. It was 19,203 words. You wouldn't believe the work she's done and she deserves at least as many kudos as I do. So, big KUDOS! :D

**Chapter Fifteen – 297 A.C.**

 

"This is definitely a dyer's tree."

 

Lyarra clenched her fists and breathed through her nose to stifle her temper. She needed to get control of her fury before any accusation could be made. Right now, they hadn't been able to see the tree without some commotion. A number of smallfolk had folded into the procession, insistently praising Lyarra both for being a Stark by birth (Lord Stark being known for saving his own smallfolk and the Northern mountain clans being one source of greyscale infected goats) and a Martell by marriage (a family that could do no wrong in the minds of those who the inoculation had saved).

 

"You're  _ sure _ , m'lady?"

 

"Positive." Gwyn shook her head and turned towards the man who the rest of the villagers seemed to defer to as a leader. "If I promise you that I'm not defacing a weirwood, but doing what the Old Gods would want in the name of justice, would you allow me to take a leaf off of the sapling?"

 

The miller chewed on his lower lip for a long moment.

 

"Well, I thank you for asking. It's more than any Frey would do. Let me go talk t'folks about it." He said, nodding back at the little knot of people standing at the outer edge of the freshly planted godswood.

 

Lyarra wondered how long it had been since stands of carefully tended saplings stood amidst neat fields, reverently tended to by the caring hands of peasants. Here, a mix of deciduous trees stood, all between waist high and man high, and each had a ring of carefully tended mulch to protect their tender roots. She wondered if Bran the Builder had once planted a Godswood so young and delicate in Winterfell. It seemed impossible to think of the great Heart Tree she'd prayed to since her first memories as being so small, but once it had to have been while the Children of the Forest waited to carve its face.

 

Leaning towards Lyarra, Gwyn began whispering urgently.

 

"Dyer trees only grow in the Westerlands. Lord Tywin's great-grandfather imported the original stand of trees from Essos, and they're  _ taxed _ ."

 

"What does that have to do with anything?"

 

"Anything taxed is traceable, Lyarra, which means that if the Lannisters knew this was happening, they also knew they would be discovered to have sold the trees as weirwoods." Gwyn breathed out quietly as they waited for the Miller to return from where he was having an intense conversation with the knot of people from the village. "Lord Tywin is a monster, but he's no-one's fool and he hates nothing more than being embarrassed. This is a petty scheme, and he would be mocked for involvement in it when it was discovered, not to mention held as dishonorable. I'll bet you your next carving against the shawl I'm embroidering that Lady Genna's husband was where this started."

 

"He's a Frey, isn't he?" Lyarra asked, pushing her surprise at the fluency of Gwyn's talk about her past away and instead working to keep her talking. She could see the fine trembling in her friend's hands as she spoke.

 

"Ser Emmon Frey, one of Walder Frey's younger sons by his first wife." Gwyn agreed, nodding.

 

"What's he like?"

 

"Arrogant, petty, foolish, and terrified of his wife." Gwyn was obviously about to say something else, but she swallowed and chose to look away instead.

 

Lyarra was trying to think of what to say to coax her into expressing more. First, she thought it would be good for her friend to let some of the poison from her past bleed out. Secondly, this situation was such that they needed to know everything they could. If these false weirwood trees were from the Westerlands, Gwyn was essentially their only source of information. The Miller returned with several other villagers while Lyarra slid an arm around Gwyn's shoulders in a comforting half-embrace.

 

"Take a leaf from the tree." The tall, wiry man told them, his expression earnest. "We've already seen Dorne is good people. I've the Sun on my shoulder to prove it. An' who'd know weirwoods better'an House Stark?"

 

Behind her the three guards who'd come with them nodded, and Ser Arron leaned further on his spear as he silently watched the proceedings. Ser Daemon had moved forward as well, his expression curious and his eyes very sharp. Lyarra was just grateful that things had arranged themselves in such a way that she could leave with Gwyn on this ride, and not spend another day mired in the politics of the Ladies of House Frey when an insult to her very Gods was going on around them.

 

Gwyn looked at Lyarra and nodded, so Lyarra leaned down and very delicately plucked a single small, light red leaf from the delicate white sapling. She could already see silvery tips on the branches of the hip-high tree, and she knew from Gwyn's description that, by the time it was man-high, the tree would have changed. It would end up with pale gray bark, dark plum colored, purple leaves, and a rich purple tint to its wood. Lyarra herself was rather wistful about carving something from purple wood, but this was hardly the time or place to ask about getting some dyer's tree lumber.

 

"If you look," Lyarra held the four-fingered leaf out towards the Miller, "The leaf has an almost orangish tint to it. Real weirwood leaves are a deep red, like blood."

 

"They're also sticky if you break or crush them." Gwyn added and took the leaf from Lyarra. "Watch."

 

Taking the leaf in one hand she crushed it, then began to rub it with her fingers. The leaf quickly began to break down into a kind of weak pulp, and wherever it touched Gwyn's softly tanned skin, it left bright red streaks. Gwyn dropped the bits of leaf and held her stained palm out.

 

"Now, this will wash off with clean cold water, but if the water's hot, the color  _ sets _ ." Gwyn took a canteen that one of the guards had handed her and demonstrated, washing the red off of her hand with a stream of clear water. "If you see someone who can't afford silks and dyes from Essos wearing Lannister red, this is how they make it."

 

"If she'd done that with a weirwood leaf, her fingers would be almost burgundy, and it wouldn't come off like that." Lyarra added. "Nor would it be like ink. Weirwood sap is thick. Do the branches do the same?"

 

"Yes, you'd crush a whole sapling like this to get a good, rich red dye. They grow them in big stands east of Lannisport for the textile trade."

 

The smallfolk clustered around them began to murmur, their expressions dark. One of them, a big man with streaks of soot on his chest and arms, brought his fist to land hard against the calloused palm of his left hand. The ugly oath that left his mouth came with a slow shake of his head, and a snort that wouldn't have been out of place amongst a herd of infuriated aurochs.

 

"Lord Frey sold us these trees, an' there'll be one like it in every hamlet from here on to the end o' his lands." The big smith shook his head and spat. "By the Gods that Abandon and the ones that Forgive, this ain't right. We  _ paid _ for'n these trees. He acted all generous-like, too, saying how it cost 'im so much to get 'im."

 

"My father has charged no-one in all of Westeros for a weirwood sapling." Lyarra said hotly, surprised when she realized more smallfolk had clustered around, until she suddenly knew why Ser Arron and Ser Daemon were standing so stiffly; they were surrounded. She ignored it, however, as she had nothing to fear. Her people had done no wrong. "The North doesn't have enough weirwoods to give one to every village, but we've sent dozens out so far to the larger keeps. I've seen the weirwood sapling we sent to the Twins. It's in their Godswood, and it's genuine."

 

Several other locals spat and the angry susurration of noise around them grew in volume. Gwyn shot Lyarra a nervous look. Her blue eyes were wide and beginning to get frightened. Lyarra, however, didn't notice. Her blood was up, and with it, her sense of justice.

 

"Listen, everyone!" Lyarra raised her voice and turned to the man who'd first approached her when she rode up, warm and wanting to express his thanks for all 'the Princess' people down in the desert’ had done for them. "Miller, you know I spoke honestly to you when I came here, yes?"

 

"You did, Princess, and we appreciate it." The man allowed, turning away from the knot of angry men he'd been gaining volume with as they all spoke, his manners rough but gently meant. "Came right up to me, you did, and said somethin' might not be right with how we're prayin' to the Old Gods and makin' 'em a new home here. You are honest people, up north and down south, as it were."

 

"We do all we can to be." Lyarra agreed. "My father, Lord Stark, came down from Winterfell to find out why we'd heard rumors of someone selling weirwoods. You said Lord Frey gave you these? We'd heard it was Lord Tully, but he told my father he knows nothing of it."

 

"Lord Tully?" The Miller snorted. "The old sod's too  _ proud _ to come out o' his castle and consort with the rabble, let alone the Old Gods. He'd never sell smallfolk nothin'. If he weren't ignoring us, he'd be gifting us to show how fine he is. He ain't the sort to try and profit off o' us through the gods, though."

 

"Whatever you're about to say, don't." Lyarra muttered to Gwyn, who closed her mouth and held both her hands up, and then Lyarra turned back to the Miller. "So it was Lord Frey?"

 

"'Twas one o' the lot of 'em from the castle." The Miller rubbed a hand over his face. "I was working, you know, so I wasn't there when the tree came. Sandyman, what works down by Burnt Branch, was who took it. Tom, where's Sandy now?"

 

"Aw, he's on his farm, where else?" Tom, a tall, thin man with a woodsman's worn but well-honed axe balanced on his shoulder, huffed. "He don't come to the village for just about anything, but he can grow corn from bare rock and smell a flood coming."

 

"S'why we made sure he took the tree." The Miller explained, his expression grieved. "We wanted to take care of it proper, you understand, and old Sandy's place is the best farm that ain't Quality that's about these parts. He's even got a small glass house to grow things. That's where he kept the tree when it was a tiny thing. It only grew hardy enough for us to dare plant it a couple of moons ago."

 

Lyarra got directions to Sandyman's place. She worked hard to convince the angry villagers not to do anything about their grievance with Lord Frey. They were angry, she could tell, and it was the kind of anger that grew all by itself and could easily run rampant.

 

She didn't want to risk the villagers getting hurt or causing the kind of disturbance that turned into chaos and panic. To avoid that, she emphasized that Lord Stark would see justice done for the insult to the Old Gods, and in this case that would mean people either losing their head or going to the Wall. They were satisfied by that idea, but wanted to see it happen, which Lyarra was loathe to promise given that she didn't know what Edmure Tully would do when he arrived.

Gwyn jumped in, however, and promised that nothing would be resolved without word being sent around. Instead she urged the villagers to take a different course. Lyarra listened closely, and hoped that her friend wasn't about to get them into more rather than less trouble. They were just supposed to be looking right now.

 

"The Lords will be expecting you to cause trouble. Don't give them what they want, or they'll be at your necks with swords and knights just to put the fear of them into you." Gwynn had advised. "Don't give the Freys the satisfaction or the chance to make an example out of anyone, or turn your Lord Paramount against you. Let Lord Stark put Ice to someone's neck. When Lord Edmure Tully's sitting in judgement, you can send a delegation to express your grievances."

 

" _ Expressing our grievances _ didn't do us much good with Hoster Tully when we heard the Old Gods had sent a way to stop the plague down from the mountains and only the Quality was getting it." The Miller spat, but then breathed out and looked at Lyarra with the same almost awed expression of gratitude he'd first directed at her when he'd seen the Martell Sun and Spear on Ser Daemon's armor. "You ain't a Tully, though, that's for sure."

 

"You have my word as a Stark," Lyarra promised. How long had she wanted to be able to say those words? "And as a Princess of House Martell, that we'll send for you. If you miss anything, it will be because there's trouble that we can't wait on taking care of."

 

"That's fair." The Miller replied, and there was a general rumble of agreement and approval from the crowd. "Princess, we'll do just as you say. I'll send a boy from my shop up to the Twins. He'll be lingering at the pay stable in the trader's tent village that's on the east side. You can't miss 'em, he's got more freckles than sense and his hair's red as they come. If trouble does come, he'll run down here fast as a dam breaking."

 

"I'll keep him in mind."

 

"You do that." The Miller said earnestly. "We ain't about to forget our friends in these parts, and Dorne's been a friend to us. Just cause we got no swords don't mean we've no weapons. A scythe'll take a man in half as easy as any sword, a pitchfork'll stab, and nobody knows their way 'round a hammer like a smith."

 

Lyarra thanked them again and led her party back towards the horses tied at the edge of the infant godswood. She couldn't get through without the crowd murmuring their thanks for the inoculation, though. She found herself required to press hands and offer kind words just to move, but she didn't mind. If anything, she was humbled by the experience. It was one thing to know what the plague had done south of the Neck, it was another to hear and see it. There wasn't a family that hadn't lost an elder or a child, and all around were widows and widowers who'd had to remarry in haste to keep their surviving children cared for and fed.

 

"I'll never understand how anyone was hoarding the goats." Lyarra muttered once she'd accepted a leg up onto Ash from Ser Arron. "It's not like you need to be innoculated more than once, and the whole thing takes maybe five minutes. You tie the goat, you stick it with the block with pins in it, you get stuck with it, and then you come down with the goatscale rash. You can cover a lot of ground and a lot of people fast."

 

"That's how Prince Doran saw things." Ser Daemon agreed, his tone becoming disgusted as he looked around. "My Prince was  _ mocked _ for finding peace after the Rebellion, and his brother applauded for his bravery for trying to start a second war. Prince Doran isn't a coward, though, he just understands the cost and won't demand that others pay it for him. A prince isn't a god and he knows it."

 

"And now he practically is one." Gwyn observed quietly, settled comfortably on her reliable brown and white rouncey, Patches.

 

Patches was as solid a mare as anyone could wish. If Lyarra's Ash was simply beautiful in her flea-bitten gray coloring, then Patches was the definition of a workhorse. Solid without being heavy, tall without being out of the ordinary, the rouncey had proven herself over the years as an animal that could do any task. She was trained to ride. Patches could be hitched to a cart and wouldn't complain. If she hadn't much spirit, she also never spooked, and she treated all her riders gently no matter their skill or lack of it.

 

Patches was currently demonstrating her better disposition as Ash danced in place, wanting to run despite the bad ground. Everything was all-over mud right now. Lyarra didn't mind being a mess after a ride, but she drew the line at risking her neck and took Ash in hand so the dancing stopped as the rest of the party mounted.

 

"Unlike our  _ other _ prince, it won't go to his head." Ser Arron noted and Lyarra felt her lips turn up in a tiny smile despite the seriousness of the situation.

 

"You're sure you're well, Princess?" Ser Daemon asked, frowning. "You were a bit pale this morning.”

 

"Compared to you, I'm always a bit pale." Lyarra joked and rolled her eyes. "Even you're tanning, Gwyn."

 

"Wait till we're farther south." Gwyn observed with a grin as one of the guards took the lead and they headed out to find Burnt Branch Farm. "I won't get as dark as Ser Arron or the Prince, but I used to get as dark as Ser Daemon."

 

Ser Daemon Sand had hair the color of his surname. His skin was a deep honey-gold, and his eyes a clear blue a few shades lighter than Gwyn's. Lyarra had been surprised to see the variety of appearances amongst the Dornish, and then been treated to a full explanation of the varying origins of the people in her lessons.

 

That had been fun. Lyarra had watched as it devolved into an argument between Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria about the Dayne family's coloring. Because it endured no matter who they married, unlike the Valyrians who they resembled but didn't share blood with, as they were of the First Men despite the resemblance. Oberyn had told her later that arguing about the Dayne family looks was a fallback for when gossip was thin.

 

"In Lannisport." Ser Daemon couldn't resist prompting and the easy expression of sharp intelligence and false innocence that had settled onto Gwyn's face since they left the castle on their mission dropped away into her now habitual blank look instead.

 

Lyarra shot him a sharp look and the knight had the grace to appear genuinely guilty. Then again that may have had less to do with Lyarra's expression than the way Ser Arron glared or the fact that Ghost, who'd shadowed Lyarra all through the day, decided that it was time to spook Ser Daemon's horse. The Sand let out a series of curses as his horse lurched off the road and into the brush in response to the young direwolf's choice to snap in its direction. He caught up a few minutes later, but stayed on the opposite side of the party from where Ghost ran at Ash's heels.

 

* * *

 

"A most interesting display with your grandson in the yard. One would have almost thought Ser Aenys a match for Black Walder."

 

Lord Stevron Frey stifled the urge to groan at the Viper's sardonic observation. For once,  _ for once, _ his grandson had listened precisely to instructions. Then Black Walder had even followed them. However, in doing his great-uncle no harm, Black Walder had also made Aenys look like more of a swordsman than he was.

 

It made sense that the Viper would catch it. The question now was to answer with a carefully constructed lie, or lead with the truth. Stevron considered what he was about to do and decided on the truth. It was best to keep the air clear between conspirators, and that was what he was about to ask the Prince of Dorne to become.

 

"I needed an excuse for him to leave the Twins in a temper that wouldn't rile anyone up too much." Stevron gestured towards the seats in front of his own small solar's warm fire and took one for himself. "He's off to find Edmure Tully and rush him here, as he seems to be taking his sweet time."

 

That prompted a pair of black eyebrows to rise towards the man's hairline and Stevron reflected that it was unfair that a man recently turned forty should look closer to two-and-thirty. He'd always seemed older than he was. Here sat before him a man who was older than his goodfather and yet passed for younger. The Gods were truly generous with their favorites, weren't they? If, for some reason, they liked this snake, then perhaps he could at least benefit from it.

 

"Not a direction I would expect Black Walder Frey to ride. I had gathered he disliked his future Lord Paramount."

 

"My grandson is long past the point where it is time he grew up." This part required no acting; his grief was genuine. "My eldest grandson died last night, along with one of my younger bastard brothers."

 

"I'm sorry to hear that." Prince Oberyn replied levelly. "However did an accident befall them in so safe a castle?"

 

"Lightning strike outside during the storm." Stevron leaned back and laid out his own hand. "I believe you shall hear of it shortly, in some form at least. Lord Stark's men are even now surreptitiously poking around the field where it happened."

 

The Red Viper said nothing, just watched him with steady black eyes. Given that the man was still wearing the light armor and sword he'd been sparring in, Stevron was all too aware that he had to take care. He was not so much younger than the Yronwood Lord who the man had earned his moniker by poisoning into a slow death so many years previously. This wasn't Lord Stark, who'd hesitate to strike a man old enough to be his father. Then again, the fact that he was  _ not _ Stark was the very reason that Stevron was approaching the Dornish Prince.

 

"Your Grace, let's speak plainly." Stevron stated and crossed his hands over his belly, interlacing his slowly twisting knuckles. "You aren't here for any particular purpose. You were wed by the Gods' design and none of your own, and I imagine all you wished to do was collect the young lady and then return to Sunspear. It was the King's interference that brought you south, and now it's Lord Stark's honor and Lady Stark's connection to the Riverlands that has held you here at the Twins when you'd have rather left yesterday at first light and called it done."

 

"You possess a unique ability to know a man so well with whom you've barely exchanged words, Ser Stevron."

 

Stevron was the oldest of too many children. Sarcasm was easy to ignore. Instead he merely smiled back, thinly.

 

"I have an active imagination, Your Grace."

 

"Perhaps then, you might imagine why I am in no hurry to leave when your delightful peasantry already view me and mine House in such a handsome light." The Viper observed in his thick Dornish accent, lightly brushing some yard dust from one knee with casual insolence. "After all, only a poor friend would allow his new acquaintances to be cheated, would he not?"

 

That was a threat that Stevron hadn't anticipated, and it made his blood run cold. The peasantry was a matter he hadn't considered. They did think that the sun shined out of House Martell's ass. It was the understandable result of the inoculation and how it had gotten to the smallfolk in the first place.

 

Stevron had ignored them utterly in his plot to keep himself and his line in possession of the Twins, for they hardly seemed important. The smallfolk vastly outnumbered them however, and at the end of the day, they relied upon them for their lives and their wealth. Nothing was more potentially damaging than unrest amongst the peasantry. Stevron couldn't imagine why his smallfolk would be angry, unless somehow the Viper was stirring them up again over the fact that Stevron's father had traded the goats he'd gotten from the North away for favors from other Houses…

 

"I'll admit that you have me at a loss, Prince Oberyn. How have my smallfolk been cheated?"

 

The younger man observed him for a moment. His black eyes were sharp and searching. For once Stevron was able to simply leave his expression open. His confusion was entirely genuine.

 

"Almost every village within a two hour ride of the Twins has a newly planted godswood. Each godswood I entered had an infantile, faceless heart tree for which the villagers paid dearly. Right now, mine own wife and a member of her household are out with guards assessing whether these heart trees are genuine." The Prince finally spoke, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "Tell me, Ser Stevron, do you believe the smallfolk will be happy with the results?"

 

"Whoever is behind this." Stevron's blood ran as cold as the voice in which he answered the Viper's statement. "Lord Stark can have their head. You have my word as a knight, Your Grace, that I knew nothing of the selling of false weirwoods to our own people."

 

"And their sale in the Reach and Westerlands?"

 

"A wagon load left a fortnight before your arrival bound for the Stormlands as well." Stevron allowed. "I had it stopped and its contents burned. Black Walder took care of that for me as well. Those before, I did not feel myself in a position to stop due to my father's support."

 

"Black Walder is an obedient grandson."

 

"When it's his neck on the line, yes."

 

"And when it's someone else's?"

 

"Then that's far preferable to  _ everyone's _ ." Stevron sat forward. "Let's speak plainly, Prince Oberyn. My family was halved by the plague. You know the sense of grief and anger such loss brings, and that foolish choices might be made in those moments."

 

He got no response, but Stevron wasn't going to give up just because of a set of black, reptilian eyes that refused to be read.

 

"Mayhaps, in a happier family, all would have pulled together in their grief and grown stronger. Ours is not a happy family."

 

"So I'd gathered from Fat Walda. Such a charming name to assign a young girl."

 

Stevron rubbed a hand over his face. This wasn't going as he hoped. Why he hadn't imagined he'd be mocked he did not know. It was the man's favorite sport now that it seemed the infamous seducer of a Dornish ass was denied the joys of whores of either gender.

 

"Since the plague came through, all everyone has tried to do was gain traction on everyone else, and with Father having survived again, they're getting desperate." Stevron breathed out. "Every year they grow closer to Lord Walder's death, and most know that with my father's death I'll have them out on their asses as soon as I can. It's long past the time, Prince Oberyn, that House Frey had a cleaning."

 

"On that, we can both agree." Prince Oberyn sat back and mirrored Stevron's posture, lacing his hands together, but lounging with more comfort than Stevron was capable of and throwing one long leg over the arm of his chair. "Allow me to speak plainly as well. You're suggesting a deal where we, how shall we put it?"

 

"Throw my more repugnant kin to the wolves?" Stevron suggested dryly.

 

" _ Apt _ ." The Viper allowed with a thin-lipped smile beneath the sharp lines of his black mustache. "You wish to exchange their fate for your place as Lord Frey."

 

"And the protection of my line and a few other innocent parties."

 

"You are aware that Hoster Tully will be practically giddy with joy at the idea of supplanting your family from this seat? I have no authority to sway your Lord Paramount's will."

 

"And that Lord Stark will want all of us punished for the insult to his Gods, yes." Stevron agreed. "I am asking you to intercede on our behalf, and trusting that Edmure Tully will be more reasonable than his father. Given the other rumors at hand, Hoster Tully will be hesitant to extend himself too far or too publicly."

 

" _ Why _ should I do this?"

 

"Three reasons." Stevron held up one hand and pointed them out.

"First, it will get you out of the Twins and the Riverlands fastest and with least effort. If our House is to be removed from power, it will not happen overnight. It will require risk, and there will be a siege and military action. You never intended to travel through this part of Westeros, let alone get caught up in a small war over some sacred Northern trees and an angry peasantry, Prince Oberyn."

 

"Second, it will reflect well on House Martell. Your arrival generally brings chaos wherever you go, Prince Oberyn, or at least your reputation would have it so. Now, instead, I would let it be known that you were instrumental in maintaining the peace. House Martell would look even better by default."

 

"And third?"

 

"You may be kin to Lord Stark now, but you're no friend of his House." Stevron finished. "Not after he turned aside and let Lord Robert shield your sister and her children's murderers during the war. This will allow you to be reasonable and still thwart the man's overdeveloped and absolute sense of honor."

 

"Good reasons all." The younger man admitted pleasantly and then slowly sat forward, like his namesake coiling for a strike. "They do not, however, tell me what I would get out of this situation. Beyond, of course, a boost to my personal reputation that I might not need. Have you considered that some men  _ enjoy _ infamy, Ser Stevron?"

 

"Having never been infamous, I would not know. Mayhaps my grandson could speak on the subject." Stevron shrugged and and reached for a fallback plan he'd been loathe to employ. "If you desire more direct payment… My brother Emmon was married to Genna Lannister for a long time, and dwelt in Casterly Rock for many years, before the plague took him because the idiot was afraid of the inoculation."

 

The Viper froze and Stevron knew he had his undivided attention.

 

"And  _ what _ , might I ask, could your late and apparently unlamented brother have heard or known during his marriage that might sway me to your side?"

 

Here was where Stevron knew it grew tricky. He didn't dare claim knowledge he did not have. He couldn't, however, make it sound like he didn't know enough to be useful. It was a fine razor's edge to walk.

 

"I do not know who murdered your sister or Prince Aegon, but I know that there was a minor knight of House Lorch who has bragged of murdering the Princess Rhaenys."

 

The man went very still, and silent for long enough that Stevron genuinely began to worry.

 

"House Lorch is a large house, much scattered. Have you nothing more  _ specific _ ?"

 

"My late brother was far too afraid of his wife and Lord Tywin to tell me more; he was in his cups when he said that much." Ser Stevron breathed out, feeling he'd made his point. "I won't invent information to benefit myself when a man's death is the end result, and we both know it will be, Prince Oberyn. I will say that you've a lady amongst your party who was much thrown in with Casterly Rock's servants, and Emmon made much of the gossip that went on behind the Lannisters' backs because they were too good to go down to the kitchens or the char rooms and find out."

 

" _ That _ I can believe." Prince Oberyn sneered and then stood. "The Lady Gwyn is no one's business but my wife's and mine; she's a member of our household and inviolate as such. As to the rest?"

 

Stevron didn't hold his breath during the gap. He had some dignity. He did, however, wait patiently for the man's sense of drama to be appeased.

 

"Be  _ specific _ as to what you wish to happen in this transfer of power, and who are the guilty parties. I'll take that information to my goodfather, and we shall proceed from there with the punishment of your House's brand of mercenary heretics."

 

"As you wish, Your Grace, _thank_ _you_." Stevron agreed and stood as well, offering his hand.

He was gratified when the Red Viper shook it, but less gratified by what he said afterward.

 

"You do realize that there is one problem with your plan that you have not thought around. Lord Stark and I both owe your father guest right. I will make no action against him under his roof while I have shared his bread and salt, and Lord Stark most certainly shall apply to the same."

 

"I have no objections to having more time to organize this." Stevron all but wilted in relief. "You're not expected to stay past tonight. Surprise my father by taking your leave early. Your wife was riding. She can declare the roads well-cleared after the storm, you can prepare your party to go, and then return with Lord Edmure. I'll make sure we open the gates and all can be arranged beforehand if Lord Stark will consent to speak on the subject tonight."

 

"I'll speak to him directly." The Dornishman rose and Stevron shoved himself up from his seat, ignoring the pain in his knees, to offer him a grateful bow.

 

* * *

 

"Whatever you're about to say, I'm not going to like it." Ned predicted as he looked up from where he was mopping at Arya's face with a clean rag.

 

He'd taken her to the Prince's solar simply because it was the largest clear space and Nymeria was in a mood. The young she-wolf was prowling around growling beneath her breath and giving every evidence of oncoming violence. Thankfully Bran's pup was yet a bit larger than Nymeria, for he was shadowing his sister. The unnamed beast with its gray fur far tawnier than the moonlit color of Arya's partner stayed just far enough back that he would not get snapped at, but close enough to make it clear Nymeria would get tackled to the ground if she misbehaved.

 

"Probably not." Prince Oberyn observed. "Lady Arya, whatever trouble did you manage to get into, and why was I not invited?"

 

"No time." His daughter grunted as Ned made another pass and wiped away the mix of mud and blood on her face, revealing clean skin and relieving him that her nose had not been broken. "One of the weaselings insulted Lyarra for being born a bastard, but I fixed him!"

 

Ned sighed and tried to stifle the mix of pride, love, and old pain that raced through him. Lyarra looked like her mother, but it was Arya who'd inherited the wolf's blood that made Lyanna who she was. So much of Lyarra was tied up in that quiet sweetness that ran through her. One Ned knew everyone attributed to him, but had been a dragon's gift instead.

 

Besides, Ned resented being called  _ sweet _ . He'd never been girlish or any such nonsense. He'd just been  _ reasonable _ . In contrast with Brandon's constantly running off to cause havoc and Robert's boastful rowdiness, he supposed that the mistake was understandable.

 

" _ Good _ !" Oberyn observed in the gap, stepping forward. "I approve, though mayhaps you could do it with a bit more dignity. You look and smell as though you were in a pig's wallow."

 

"I pushed him into one after I walloped him with my tourney sword and Nymeria tore the seat out of his britches." Arya told him proudly before wrinkling her nose. "He splashed."

 

"Ah, well, a good thing to remember for the future remonstrance of your enemies. For now, a bath will answer nicely."

 

Arya's eyes widened tragically in protest.

 

"A bath." Ned agreed in his most fatherly voice and watched as the Red Viper reached out and caught his daughter under the armpits, grinning at her.

 

Holding her well away from himself, the prince marched her to the door where he handed her to a waiting guard and made her need of a thorough washing clear. The guard received Arya with a broad grin. The sound of his daughter recounting her victory to warmly laughter from the approving warrior was all it took to rest his soul a little on the subject of her loss. Ned would suffer for sending Arya to Dorne, but he knew she'd flourish there. He was again tortured with the thought of his father's shortsightedness. If only there'd been a Dornish betrothal in Lyanna's future, maybe his sister wouldn't have run away with that silver-tongued idiot…

 

"Wherever your mind goes when you make that face, I know not why you keep returning; it looks not the least bit pleasant."

 

"You're about the same age, though, so Father's lived through everything you have." Bran, who'd been sitting and patiently waiting with a book in front of the fire, finally spoke. "So I don't know how he'd go somewhere you couldn't go in his mind."

 

Ned jolted out of his revere to find that Nymeria had padded after her person, apparently in a better mood now that Arya's temper had abated with Oberyn's praise of her bravery. The Viper had some uses, after all. As it was, his face grew dark again at Bran's words, but he gave a short nod.

 

"You'll make a fine knight, young Lord Bran, and a wise one. Though I would point out that no two men carry the same memories, no matter how similar in age." The Viper looked down to smile at Ned's son. "That is the book of tales Lyarra chose to bring with her, yes?"

 

"They're Old Nan's stories!" Bran Stark beamed up at him. "I hadn't realized that Lyarra wrote them all down."

 

"Well, we shall have to have copies made then, so that the Tales of the North can be better heard in Dorne. We are now kin, yes?"

 

"That's a great idea." Bran enthused. "Could you send us tales from Dorne, too? You have to have your own stories. Well not  _ your _ stories, though your personal stories are wonderful, Prince Oberyn. I mean Dornish legends. Since we're family we should learn them too."

 

Ned praised Cat for having passed on some of her diplomacy to their offspring. The Gods knew he'd had little enough to pass on. As it was, the Viper's smile was entirely genuine as he nodded in agreement at the idea. Ned took the opportunity to reclaim Lyarra's book and send Bran off with one of his own people who was waiting in the hallway. Strictly speaking, Ned had suspended his lessons somewhat, but there was a sheet of sums he knew waiting for Bran's attention and it would keep the boy busy while he saw what had brought the Viper in search of him. Because while Ned might have technically taken over the man's own quarters, he knew from the Viper's expression that his presence there was no surprise.

 

"Tell me, precisely how much of a bloody, volatile  _ mess _ you want to make while handling the weirwood issue?" The Viper's first words didn't disappoint, and Ned scowled. "Before I move forward, I need an estimate of the human suffering you want to incur before any plans are made."

 

"I don't wish  _ any _ suffering." Ned glared back, annoyed at the flippancy even as he realized he was being riled on purpose. "So you can cease the dramatics and tell me what you've done now."

 

"You don't know me well enough to take that tone with me, Lord Stark, you've at least three more years before you earn such exasperation."

 

"Your capacity to annoy me, Your Grace, exceeds the bounds of time."

 

"Oh Ned, you say the  _ sweetest _ things!"

 

"Should I come back later?"

 

Ser Deziel Dalt's dry comment from the doorway sparked a laugh from the Prince and Ned glowered at both of the Dornishmen.

 

"The Princess' party has been spotted, they're maybe fifteen minutes away."

 

"Good." Ned said at the same time that the Viper scowled in displeasure.

 

"Do not escort my wife to the tower. Have her wait and meet me in the stables. Make some excuse with the horses, but keep her there and double the guards." Oberyn Martell's humor vanished completely, revealing the competent man that hid beneath the mountain of annoyance that made up his exterior. "Alert the rest to be ready for what we discussed previously."

 

"Yes, Your Grace."

 

"What exactly was  _ discussed _ , Prince Oberyn?" Ned asked with quiet insistence as he realized just how much time and useful discussion might have been lost to the man's need to bait him. "What is going on and what has it to do with Lyarra or the weirwood rumors? She was going to see whether the village heart trees were false, nothing more. We are in Lord Frey's home under  _ guest right _ ."

 

"I'm not unaware of that, Lord Stark. These are precautions for my wife's safety, in case Lord Frey's grasp of ethics is no better than Twyin Lannister's." Oberyn Martell stepped forward. "To be blunt and swift about it, Stevron Frey admitted that some of his family cooked this plot up and framed Hoster Tully for it. The trees came from the Westerlands, as Lady Gwyn thought they might, and are being grown in that field your men found earlier. Last night Stevron Frey's heir and eldest grandson died of lightning strike while trying to hide it, as did one of the natural born sons of Lord Frey. Stevron's had enough of shielding the others because of kinship and wishes this resolved."

 

"He wishes to escape punishment for his involvement, you mean." Ned felt his own temper flare. "Have you any idea what they have done? They've cast the honor of the entire North -  _ all of my people!  _ \- in doubt. They've sullied mine own wife's name in Winterfell and amongst my bannermen. They've drawn her father's name into some plot to profit from our Gods - the same Gods who were driven north with  _ fire and hangings _ when the Andals came with their bloody Seven - and risked her safety and our standing-."

 

"I know what they've done. Do you think that in the years since I've served as my brother's sword arm in Dorne, I've never had to answer for having Doran's name smeared?" Prince Oberyn countered, his expression fierce and, to Ned's surprise, slightly tired. "Now Doran's rule is unquestioned and every peasant in Westeros loves to hear his name, but it was not always so. Dorne is no easy place to rule from a wheeled chair. Or did you think that I seldom left Dorne after my sister's death only because my brother wouldn't trust my temper?"

 

Ned fell silent and then breathed out.

 

"Doran's health has not been poor so long as that."

 

"No, but someone had to stay with him as Mellario grew more and more unreasonable over the responsibilities of a prince. Do you think it is easy to rule when your wife extorts your cooperation in family matters by threatening her own life?" The words hissed from between the Viper's teeth, and afterwards Ned could see the man wished he could snatch them back out of the air from the way his jaw tightened. "None of that has anything to do with this. Stark, there are some _ fifty-eight  _ left of House Frey, not counting current pregnancies or small children.  _ Eighteen _ of those grown are women. Some are wives whose families will not take them back as widows. Others are widowed and childless daughters sent back to the Twins. Do you wish to see them cast out with no protection after we ride to Riverrun and drop this in Hoster Tully's hands?"

 

That left a sour taste in Ned's mouth and he breathed out, pushing his temper aside. Eighteen noblewomen with nowhere to go was a unique problem in any situation other than open warfare. In the south there was at least the Seven and their Septs to count on. Now many of those had closed. With the Faith refusing the inoculation and calling it heresy until the very end when the Plague was almost spent, entire religious houses stood empty and barren because all inside had turned to stone. The ladies of House Frey, if cast out, would find no comfort there. Nor could the Faith of the Seven really afford to support a whole cast out house; not when so many lords were moving to the Old Gods, where there were no tithes and their smallfolk would look upon them more kindly.

 

"How many children?" Ned wanted to know. " _ Minor _ children, too young to squire or arrange a fostering or some trade for?"

 

"Mayhaps a dozen or more. I'm not sure. House Frey has been trying to make up for its losses, it seems, and some of those about may be natural born." The Viper pulled a face and then threw himself into a chair. "I'm not asking that there be  _ no _ punishment. Stevron Frey has offered the names of twelve of those heading the plot, including the four ringleaders. He is willing to depose his own father. He'll make no protest for up to six of those guilty going under your sword or Lord Edmure Tully's, but he asks that the others be allowed to take the Black if they so choose."

 

"And that is all?"

 

"No, he offers reparations as well. The village heart trees he seems to have been personally unaware of, but he's promised full reimbursement to the smallfolk. The Houses in the Reach and villages elsewhere will all be paid back as well, along with a generous amount given to both Lord Tully and your Lady wife to apologize for the slights you have suffered."

 

"I would prefer a set toll rate for traffic to and from the North."

 

Oberyn looked at him in surprised admiration.

 

"Then you will have to speak to  _ him _ of it, but I think you'll find him amenable. The man wants to keep his birthright and his neck intact. Also, I know not how, but Stevron Frey seems a reasonable man despite the creature who begat him. He's agreed for us to speak to him today to form a plan, then ride out this evening with our parties. Guest Right will be severed and, with luck, we will come upon Edmure Tully quickly and you may convince him that this is the correct course. Then Ser Stevron shall let Tully's men and ours into the Twins, help us take his family in custody, judgement can be rendered by the Lord Paramount of the Riverland's Heir, and we can get on with this ridiculous and unwanted trip to King's Landing!"

 

Anything less than full satisfaction and the fall of the House stuck in Ned's craw, but the obvious irritation of the man he was speaking to helped him relax away from his own temper. He shuddered to think of what it would mean to actually disinherit a House so large as the Freys. Finding some honorable way to settle the women alone would be a nightmare in logistics and cost. Ned knew that Hoster Tully would be eager to throw the Freys out, but he also knew that with his goodfather's reputation already so smeared, he couldn't be seen as showing greater cruelty to innocent women. He couldn't imagine the Lord of the Trident would wish to spend his later years finding situations for an army of weasel-faced women.

 

"I will speak to Lord Stevron myself before any agreement is reached. I will give my word on no agreement unless my goodbrother stands beside me as his father's voice and agrees to all of it." He cautioned and got a reasonable, serious nod in return for once.

 

" _ Done _ ." The Viper rose. "I can take you to Ser Stevron as soon as I get Lyarra settled and preparing my household to leave this place. He's waiting, and Lord Edmure should be close, Gods willing, and we can leave and meet him on the road so this can be resolved. Ser Stevron was desperate enough to send Black Walder out with a letter for your goodbrother."

 

"So that's the reason for that commotion in the yard this morning?" Ned recalled being jarred out of a meeting with his own men by the sound of swords clashing.

 

"Yes, though everyone else is simply to think that Black Walder lost his temper over his brother's death. Aenys Frey is apparently the man behind the weirwood plot now that Emmon Frey's in his tomb."

 

Ned's temper flared even as he felt a well of satisfaction. It was satisfaction that came with teeth of its own, however. He'd spent too many days and nights stewing in fury at the idea of his wife suffering in silence as she lost face she'd worked so many years to build amongst his people. Now he had a name to set to the shadowy sense of anger and injustice he'd had to deal with for too long.

 

Cat yet lived, however, and she was there for him to love in spirit if not currently in the flesh. Ned held his own names on the tip of his tongue, held back by an oath he hadn't want to give to a man who was his brother in all but name. Knowing what Oberyn had to feel, with Lyanna already on his mind given Arya's earlier actions, and everything else…

 

"I'm doing you an injustice and I know it, Your Grace." Ned finally spoke through the silence he'd maintained as much for his own sense of justice - did he not deserve to deal with the man's anger and sharp-edged tongue after utterly failing to prevent Princess Elia's murder or that of her children? - as a way to keep himself from throttling his unwanted goodson.

 

"Prince Oberyn… it means little and I can promise you nothing, but I plan to tax the King with what was done to your sister and her children in King's Landing. You have little reason to believe it, but Robert has ever been a good man at heart. I told him the oath was wrong when he swore me to it, and it's been years. I would have you know I will do all in my power to be released from it, and when I am, I shall do all in my power to see that an accounting is made for the evils of the siege."

 

There was a long and tense moment of silence during which Ned decided he'd have better relied on his strengths and kept his mouth shut, at least until Prince Oberyn spoke.

 

"Do you  _ honestly _ believe a man who referred to innocent children as  _ dragonspawn _ will be so moved?" His tone was cutting and his anger deep, but underneath it was a kind of shock, as if he were marveling at Ned's stupidity.

 

He wouldn't be the first, Ned thought wryly. Too many people equated honor with idiocy. As though making the right choice somehow doomed you.

 

"Aye, if he can be made to see sense." Ned argued. "Robert is my dearest friend. He made me swear that oath when he was injured, in pain, and furious at all around him. He's lost children of his own now. I will speak to him, and I believe he will see reason. That he will see what's just."

 

"And if he does not?"

 

"He has to." Ned said because deep down, in the darkest places underneath his skin, he didn't know what he'd do if Robert still couldn't see his way to finding this one small piece of justice for a group of people so long dead they couldn't possibly do his reign any harm.

 

The Prince scoffed, but Ned thought he saw some change in the man's posture. He wasn't sure if it was a sign of him working harder to quell his temper than he normally did. It might have even been some sign that Ned's words had pierced the righteous fury that blinded the man to his own behavior as much as Ned's own beliefs had ever blinded him.

 

"Your ill-spoken oath forbids you from giving me names. Might it allow you to confirm one I already know?"

 

"Gwyn spoke?" Ned was shocked.

 

Oberyn's endless black eyes sharpened.

 

"While it's very kind of you to verify that Lady Gwyn does know that which I seek." Ned silently cursed himself as the man spoke. "No. She's said nothing. Stevron Frey offered me some information in return for carrying this offer to you. He told me that a knight of House Lorch murdered Rhaenys."

 

Ned's breath caught in his throat, but one of the iron bands wrapping around his chest where his sense of honor stood bound by his oath loosened.

 

" _ Aye _ ." Ned swallowed. "He's neither wrong nor lying. That much I feel free in telling you."

 

The man's expression was as dangerous and sharp as the spear he carried and Oberyn nodded as he stood, adjusting his sword belt and the leather and copper armor he wore when sparring as he rose from his chair. Straightening his armor as he stood, Ned repeated the gesture with his clothing. Prince Oberyn cast a look over him as he did so and Ned gave him a narrow-eyed stare, waiting for whatever sally or - worse - compliment might follow. The man lived to dismay him, after all.

 

"I'll get Lyarra then and get my party underway. You need to get into your own armor just in case and ready your people."

 

"Aye." Ned agreed with a quick nod, then paused, scowling. "Lyarra won't stay in the stable long, and we've spoken for longer than I intended. I'll get my armor and make it known we'll soon take leave of our host. You shall join me?"

 

"Yes, first we speak to Lord Stevron. Then we'll observe our courtesies to the Late Lord Frey one last time. The  _ next _ time he sees us we'll not be so welcome."

 

Ned agreed and they spent another moment discussing how and where to place their men just in case the Freys made a move before they were ready. Then Ned went to get his armor and Ice. He had a good knife on him and a throwing axe, but he'd feel better with his family's ancestral sword in his hands.

 

As to the Viper, as little as he liked the man more often than not, he had no doubt that he'd use the spear he'd picked up from its place against the wall, and use it well, if called upon to protect Lyarra. Ultimately, for all his worries, Ned had to admit that the Gods had not done badly by him. Barring complications, the man could at least keep her safe, and wasn't that the thing he'd wanted most from any husband he chose for Lyarra?

 

* * *

 

It fit with Oberyn's experience of things going to Hell that they would be crossing the Great Hall to make their farewells to Lord Walder Frey when several members of that House lost their minds. They'd sent word that they were preparing to go now that the roads were known to be passable to a wheelhouse. Walder Frey had received word that they were leaving and accepted it, asking them to briefly break bread with him before they left, as was customary.

 

Oberyn took Lyarra with him. He could think of no excuse to omit her and where Lyarra went, Lady Gwyn insistently and silently followed. Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria could, reasonably, be preparing to leave. Bran and Arya could be sent with the same excuses, and so that they would not disturb the conversation of the adults. That put them amidst the bulk of their party. Oberyn chose to have Ser Arron, Ser Daemon, Ser Deziel, and Ser Ulwyck with him. Behind Lord Stark walked four guards of his own, carefully chosen.

 

None of them got to say anything, of course. That was the difference between a tourney and a real fight. One was staged. The other happened. Even the Weasel Lord himself could only cry out in dismay as a tall, gray, round-shouldered, bald man with a rat-tailed beard that Oberyn recognized as Aenys Frey shoved his way through his crowd of relatives with several armed men at his back and then surged forward to attack.

 

Oberyn shoved Lyarra behind him automatically, moving her within the circle of his men. His wife had changed into a gown for this final, formal courtesy before they departed and left the rules of guest right behind. It was a very northern gown, however, and suitably practical. The gray dress went only to her ankles, didn't encumber her movement, and its long sleeves were unornamented and followed her arms closely with no trailing ends to grab. Likewise, Lyarra had Gwyn draw her hair back into a single braid, securing the curls by winding stout white ribbons through the plait.

 

Most importantly for Oberyn's piece of mind, however, the sword he'd given her, with the amber teardrop nestled in the crossguard and the winding line of tiny garnets spiraling down the hilt, was belted firmly at his wife's waist. Oberyn had no intention of having her fight. That did not mean he didn't want her prepared for it. He'd even made sure Ser Arron pressed a dagger into Lady Gwyn's hands for her to slip into her own belt of brass rings wound through with multi-colored ribbons. He had no idea if the girl could use it, but better to have it than not.

 

"A fine farewell House Frey offers!" Oberyn smiled past the sword he crossed with a tall, stout man with more brawn than speed or wit.

 

"Fine words from a  _ snake _ who would plot against his host!"

 

"I offered and will offer your father no harm while under his roof."

 

It was true, if only by technicality. Either way, the man had conspired to lie and defraud his own people. Oberyn's ability to be ashamed of such actions was limited.

 

"You'll never get out from here alive." The man snarled and lunged forward.

 

He wasn't bad with the heavy two-handed blade he used, but the man had no finesse. Oberyn stepped back and to the side, feinting, and Hosteen Frey followed him doggedly. He kept up his speed, overturning a bench and leaping up upon a table to keep the big man moving, sweating, and extending himself. A few more comments revealed that he assumed that, because Oberyn preferred to fight with a spear he did not currently have with him, he wouldn't know what to do with a sword. It was easy enough to lull the man into a false sense of security by retreating.

 

He made the usual noise when Oberyn's narrower sword slid past his defenses and into the unarmored and protected gap beneath his arm. The surprised expression was mundane as well. All men looked shocked at their own death. Oberyn yanked his blade back and shoved the man to the side to fall heavily, dead of a pierced heart.

 

Behind him, he saw Ser Daemon toying with a massive, fat man in his mid-thirties. Oberyn recalled the man as being introduced as Raymund Frey. The dumb ox was gasping out invective as Daemon danced around him, subjecting him to cut after cut. Daemon, Oberyn reflected, still had his sense of the dramatic and his tender heart. He was actually giving the brute a chance to surrender.

 

Oberyn left Daemon to his prey and went instead to where Ser Arron was currently facing down two men of less than twenty. Both had leapt in unarmored and one was armed with a chair leg. The other had procured a long, curved knife and was using a piece of firewood as a shield. Neither had been part of the original armed party of Freys, and as both were more boys than men, Ser Arron was taking care as he swung his mace.

 

Oberyn drew his sword in a quick sweep across the back of one's boots, hamstringing him and drawing an agonized scream from the boy as one of his legs went limp beneath him. Kicking the knife away, he ordered the boy to stay down. The lad's brother immediately turned his back to Ser Arron and earned his own fall as the knight drove a mailed fist against the back of the boy's head. Oberyn hoped that Ser Arron had shown enough control not to leave the young fool permanently damaged.

 

Another Frey, this one Oberyn could not attach a name to, rushed him. This man had obviously come prepared. He wore a mail shirt and carried an bastard sword. He also had almost no experience with the thing, for he swung wildly and was more of a danger to those around them than he was to Oberyn himself. The Viper was all too happy to duck the man's wild swinging and slide his own blade between the man's wide-braced legs.

 

The Frey squealed in fear for his manhood, but he'd have done better to fear for his life. Oberyn drew his sword back, aiming low along the inside of his thigh. The man had worn no armor on his legs and Oberyn's sword was as sharp as a razor. It sliced through wool and flesh until it severed the big artery in the leg, and Oberyn stepped back as the man fell, grasping his thigh as his life bled away.

 

Something rebounded off Oberyn's ankle and he risked a look. Acting on instinct he kicked the rolling head away and it revolved quickly across the floor, splashing blood everywhere and prompting more hysterical screams from the clusters of women who'd become trapped in the Hall during the fighting. Oberyn did regret terrifying the ladies, though he thought that in this case his gut-reaction to kick the thing towards them should be blamed less than the man with the damned Valyrian greatsword who'd just taken Aenys Frey's head clean off his shoulders. Whatever anger Oberyn had directed at the man for having claimed to have bested the Sword of the Morning when he had not, he had to admit that Lord Eddard Stark could fight.

 

A massive clang, and the sudden hiss of rope moving quickly prompted a group of Frey men who were about to come boiling out of the seats they'd been in, to tumble to the ground instead. If they weren't injured, they were shocked into scrambling away from those who were. Not to mention the massive circle of wrought iron that had once hung above their head holding torches.

 

At the side of the hall Oberyn spotted the light reflecting of Lady Gwyn Parren's bright blonde hair as she flitted to another of the ropes holding the huge torch chandelier's aloft and sliced through it with Ser Arron's knife. Realizing that attack could now come from above, more chaos descended as everyone looked over their heads in alarm. Oberyn gestured for Ser Daemon, who'd just dispatched his own fat opponent, to go guard the girl.

 

This proved unnecessary as Oberyn saw Fat Walda standing at Gwyn's side with a large iron pan in one meaty hand. When one of her own relatives ran towards them, the girl she swung the thing with surprising force. It impacted the face of the man with a solid sound and he went down like a sack of bricks.

 

"Stop, stop you fools,  _ stop _ !"

 

The shrill, frantic shrieking of an old man's croaking voice somehow penetrated the massive fight that had erupted. Oberyn looked forward in shock and felt his lips begin to turn up in delight at what he saw. One of House Frey's knights was laying at the foot of the raised dias. Ghost's jowls were bloody and the man's sword was laying feet away from his hands as he clutched at where the half-grown pup had torn the back of his knee out and then danced out of reach.

 

"All of you, stop!" Lord Walder Frey shrieked again, his rheumy eyes wide, as he demanded of his children: "You  _ idiots _ , what have you done now?"

 

Princess Lyarra Martell, her hair having pulled free of her braid to form a tangled river of nearly black curls down the back of her iron gray gown, stood directly before the high seat. Lord Walder cowered upon it as she held the tip of her sword pressed to his withered old neck. How she'd gotten up there, Oberyn didn't know, but he had every intention of taking his knights to task later for their charge having slipped away. That said? The sight of his wife standing before that wrecked old cretin with blood on her sword as she held it to his throat?

 

"What in the name of the Seven is going on here?!"

 

Edmure Tully's voice thundered, as confused as the expression on his handsome face, as he stood with a large party of fully armed and armored knights at the door to the Great Hall. Ser Stevron Frey was panting at his side from apparently having run to let the young lord in. Looking over at the expression of deep disgust and affronted dignity on Lord Stark's face, Oberyn did the only thing that made the least bit of sense.

 

"Well, my Lord, we were bidding House Frey farewell." Oberyn drawled. "I'm afraid they simply could not bear to let us go!"

 

* * *

 

Lyarra had  _ intended _ to demand her husband tell her if he'd known that this would happen. She wanted to go fuss at her father. She was worried that he'd been hurt, because she could see a cut through his leather vambrace. Mostly she just wanted to step back and let Edmure Tully stalk forward and take control of the room.

 

When her husband turned from addressing the man to sprint towards her, however, something else happened. Later she would firmly blame it on the wolf's blood. Obviously fighting just did things to a person. If they had Stark blood, some of those things were a little inappropriate. Robb once kissed a serving girl down in Wintertown after getting into a fight at the tavern. These things just  _ happened _ .

 

"Lyarra, you're well?" Oberyn asked, sprinting towards her with an expression that was equal parts admiration and genuine concern.

 

Lyarra stepped down from the dias, removing her sword from Walder Frey's age-spotted gullet, and then she was directly in front of her husband. A husband whose dark hair and forehead was streaked with his own sweat as well as a streak of someone else's blood. His sword was still held easily in his hand, and a smattering of red droplets fell from the tip to trail him when he moved.

 

Instead of answering, Lyarra stepped forward. She just - she  _ wanted _ something. She wasn't sure exactly what that was until she'd tossed her sword to Gwyn, who'd scrambled up beside her as Lord Edmure arrived. At that point, her hands were free, her husband was directly in front of her, and her body knew what she wanted to do even if her mind had yet to catch up.

 

She meant to grab him by the small of the back and drag him towards her by his belt, but Lyarra was a great deal shorter than her husband. Instead she ended up planting both hands along the curve of his ass and dragging him forward until they were pressed together. She was on her toes then, the hard bits of copper worked into his leather armor and the teeth of his scale mail digging into her chest and belly as she leaned up and he leaned down to meet her. A moment later and she'd claimed his mouth as her own.

 

She wasn't sure who bit whose lip first, but she would be forced to admit that she was definitely the one who shoved her tongue past his teeth.  _ He _ was the one who let out a surprised moan and then fisted his hand in her hair, though! His other arm, still holding his sword, crossed along her back just beneath her shoulder blades to better press their bodies together. Then his tongue joined hers and Lyarra closed her eyes, suddenly, completely, and totally content to be where she was in a way she couldn't even describe.

 

That went on for a while. Lyarra wasn't sure how long. At least twice she drew back a bit to catch her breath. Oberyn chased her with his teeth and his lips and his tongue. Each time he drew her back into the kiss, and Lyarra knew she sighed and went happily, moaning her appreciation when he bit down her lower lip and mirroring the noise himself when she returned the favor.

 

" _ Lyarra _ !"

 

It was her father's pained bark of her name that shocked her out of whatever very pleasant place her riled blood had taken her. She turned to see Ned Stark's face a deep red as he stood, Ice in hand, and observed her with an expression that could only be called pained embarrassment. Around him stood his men, armed Riverrun knights, and a handsome auburn haired man in his twenties who could only be Lady Stark's brother. A handsome man, it should be added, who was looking at her with a kind of astonished admiration.

 

" _ Father _ ?" Lyarra's voice was a little hoarse as she cleared it, trying to step away from Oberyn and only then realizing she still had him by the ass. She released her husband quickly. "Are you alright, Father?"

 

"I'm fine, are you?" Her father asked gruffly, then shot Oberyn a harsh look as if blaming him for a great many things.

 

"I'm well." Lyarra answered lamely, then turned back towards her husband, suddenly worried as she reached up to brush at his hairline and the dried blood there. "My Prince?"

 

Oberyn took this as permission to slide his free arm around her waist and tuck her against his side. Lyarra felt herself blushing and realized with embarrassment that almost everyone's eyes were still on her. Doing her best to ignore the whole world, she began to gently straighten the collar protruding from her husband's armor, the shoulder guard that was out of place, and check him for injuries while she was at it.

 

"Lord Stark, Brother, mayhaps I can get a better explanation?" Lord Edmure finally drew his eyes away from Lyarra and turned towards his brother. "Ser Stevron, I happened upon a group of smallfolk gathered upon the road with scythes and other weapons. They claim that your House has been selling false weirwoods in my father's name, and that you planned ill for your guests."

 

"As you can see, they spoke the truth, my Lord." Stevron Frey breathed out, his expression grieved. "I did all I could to restrain it, but some of my family's greed outgrew my ability to control them. I am sorry."

 

"What are you talking about, Stevron?"

 

Lyarra looked up and spotted the mix of fear and slyness on old Lord Walder's face and wondered if he was even now trying to think of some way to deny his own culpability. She imagined it was likely so and was about to speak up, but Oberyn stopped her by tightening his arm around her waist in warning. She looked at her husband, but he merely shook his head once and she held her tongue. She really didn't have any idea what was going on well enough to intervene.

 

"He's talking about, Lord Walder, the field of Westerlands Dyers' Trees growing less than a quarter league from this castle's south wall." Lyarra's father's voice was full of angry judgement. "And the rumors that have come so far as Winterfell that Lady Stark, _ my own wife _ , was conspiring to steal and sell my people's sacred trees south of the Neck for profit."

 

"I've known nothing of this!" Lord Walder Frey proclaimed fairly convincingly, his expression going from tragic to furious and back again as he sank further into his chair. "Mine own  _ children _ !? What proof of this do you have? Those trees were a gift from my son Emmon, so that we might break into more expensive textiles."

 

"Dyers' red is a dirt cheap color. The dye can even be dried and shipped." Gwyn countered wryly from the side and Lyarra held in a cheer at her friend's daring to step forward and speak in front of all of those surrounding them with her chin held high and her hair gleaming beneath the remaining torches overhead. "If that was Ser Emmon's purpose, then he's not one I'd trust to guide your investments, dead or yet living."

 

"If that was the case then the saplings wouldn't have passed from your children's and grandchildren's hands directly into that of your own smallfolk after they paid exorbitant sums for them." Edmure Tully frowned. "I spoke to a local miller who has the respect of most of the countryside. He corroborates Ser Stevron's story. Lord Stark, have you found the same?"

 

"We could have hardly stopped at the Twins without finding out." Lyarra's father replied harshly. "The truth was poorly concealed."

 

"This must be dealt with." Lord Edmure stated, his expression full of severe intention. It was ruined, however, when he turned to an older knight who was standing beside him in heavy gray plate. "We must deal with this."

 

It was almost as if he was asking for advice or affirmation and Lyarra held in a wince. She was no-one's idea of a leader. She'd just been a bastard daughter until the Gods had Marked her as a Dornish Prince's wife. Even she knew, however, that someone in Edmure Tully's position shouldn't be  _ asking _ for anything.

 

"First we should secure the Twins, my Lord." The knight responded and Edmure nodded and turned again to Lyarra's father, then her husband, then looked between them as if trying to decide who to address first.

 

"I've concerns for my wife's health and safety." Oberyn surprised her by responding. "I would not have had her caught up in this, if I could have foreseen such an attack. If you will all forgive me, I will withdraw to make sure she is as well as she thinks herself. If you have need of me, you need only ask Lord Edmure, but this is not Dornish business."

 

"No, of course not. Please see to your wife's comfort." Edmure Tully spoke eloquently and generously as he bowed in their direction. "Your Grace."

 

Oberyn bowed back politely and Lyarra recalled that she should curtsey (though not too low for she outranked Lady Stark's brother now, she remembered from her lessons). Then Oberyn was nodding at his guards, who clustered around them. Gwyn moved forward, and with her came Ghost, who'd drifted away from where she'd taken up a position in front of Oberyn to sniff at one of the bodies now on the floor; all of them belonged to House Frey she noted in relief. Then she saw the broad figure nervously hovering at the edge of the party and made a decision.

 

"Lady Walda, please come with Lady Gwyn." Lyarra stated firmly. "I've an opening in my household and I think after today's events, that you would be most comfortable there."

 

Fat Walda Frey, ignored and mocked by her own kin, who'd come to defense of Gwyn as the first friend of similar age and rank she'd ever made in her life, stared at Lyarra in complete astonishment. Then she burst into tears. Lyarra was held too firmly at her husband's side to respond.

 

Gwyn, however, was not. The slight blonde girl stepped forward to pat the other blonde on the shoulders and nudge her forward. Then Ser Arron hung his mace on his belt and reached out to wrap his own arm comfortingly around the girl as they led her out with their party. The fatherly knight could be heard saying gentle, comforting things while Gwyn awkwardly prattled on about how she was sure they'd both have fun learning Dornish cooking. While Lyarra worried about perhaps having stepped out of bounds her husband leaned down and pressed his lips to her ear. His mustache tickled her, making her shiver, as Oberyn spoke.

 

"Darling, if  _ this _ is what a fight does to your blood, then I'm afraid I'll be starting them for the rest of our marriage."

 

"You would have done that anyway." Lyarra countered, blushing.

 

"Yes, but now I have a good excuse."

 

* * *

 

_ Three days _ . It had taken that long to sort out matters at the Crossing, and Oberyn couldn't be happier to see the back of the place. As it was, they'd trimmed down their stay at Riverrun accordingly to better compensate for the extended stay at the Twins. Now, instead of the fortnight they'd planned in Lord Hoster Tully's company, a mere five days were allotted for the castle. Oberyn noted his wife's relief and tried not to let it color his own opinions too badly.

 

Lord Edmure Tully had not been adequately prepared for leadership. That much had become clear while they cleaned up the mess that was House Frey and the weirwood plot. The man had a good heart, but the young knight's education had been weak on the actual day-to-day dangers of governance.

 

In the end Oberyn had sat back and let Lord Stark handle his goodbrother. Save for a few exchanges where he'd been surprised and gratified that the future Lord Tully had asked for a Dornish perspective on the proper, just punishment for this or that offense, Lord Stark was more than welcome to see to his goodbrother's education. For his part, Ned Stark had looked profoundly uncomfortable with it for all of fifteen minutes, then surprised Oberyn by sliding effortlessly into a mentorship.

 

Oberyn was only too happy to let the Warden of the North have it. Edmure Tully was certainly pretty enough to have earned his attention earlier. As of his Mark's appearance, however, such things were now impossible. Rather than dwell on it and work himself up into a temper, Oberyn concentrated instead of something that did please him: namely his wife.

 

Lyarra's surprising demonstration of passion couldn't have been more well-timed. The fire and ingenuity she'd shown in taking the head of House Frey hostage in the fight after managing to run a young knight through when separated from her guards had earned instant approval from his people. The Dornish appreciated survivors and they wanted competence in anyone they were expected to follow. Warrior princesses were approved of in Dorne.

 

Beyond that, however, Lyarra's inherent shyness about intimate matters had fallen away. Oberyn could appreciate this on a personal level, and he had. Oh, indeed, he  _ truly _ had. Beyond that, on a political level, her actions had proven to his people that Lyarra was neither cold nor prudish; two things that the Dornish would not appreciate seeing in their princess. The display of passionate want that was the kiss she'd dragged him into had done wonders for how his people thought of her.

 

It had also left Oberyn with an arousal so intense he'd peaked twice before softening, but that was merely a  _ personal _ victory. The decision by his people that Lyarra was shy, but still a woman who wanted and deserved her princely husband was a victory that would last his wife years if she maintained it.  _ Shyness _ the Dornish would find endearing on a princess so young and beautiful and foreign.  _ Prudishness _ or a sense that she was judging their ways, they would not accept kindly.

 

"You needn't watch me so closely, you know."

 

"Hm?" Oberyn blinked himself awake in the comfortable confines of his bed and tore his eyes away from the tent's ceiling to look at the woman whose head was resting against his shoulder. "What do you mean, darling? Mayhaps I enjoy watching you. My wife is comely, or so I've been told."

 

She rolled her dark gray eyes at him and rose up on one elbow. The sheets fell down to her ribs and he fastened his eyes on the soft white mounds of her breasts and their pink tips. Oberyn licked his lips and reached down beneath the covers to adjust himself. They'd already made love that night, but he judged himself ready to make love again with a few more moments of time and a bit of encouragement.

 

It was their first night on the road away from the two interconnected castles, and Oberyn had viewed it as a celebration. They were officially escaping the place, the weirwood plot had been resolved, and he hadn't been responsible for sending out the multitude of ravens explaining the situation for once. He hadn't even had to execute anyone; that duty had fallen to Ned Stark and a pallid Edmure Tully. House Reed had sent down a group of warriors and Ned Stark had sent a group of his own guards back North to join the Crannogmen in escorting the six men of House Frey who'd opted to join the Night's Watch to save their necks.

 

"Oberyn, be serious." Lyarra smiled at him even as she said it. "I mean, you've been so  _ careful _ of me since we left. Don't think I haven't missed you encouraging me to stay in the wheelhouse, or the way you've fussed over me. I'm fine, the fight was fine, though I'm in no hurry to repeat it. I never thought I'd actually use my training."

 

"Gods willing you won't have to, at least for many moons." Oberyn sat up a little further and looked down into her eyes, surprised. "Lyarra, you're  _ aware _ of why I'm concerned, yes?"

 

"Because I am a lady who was in a swordfight."

 

"You're more than competent, and while I would worry for anyone your age in their first engagement, that's not what I'm referring to." Oberyn began to feel a dawning mix of horror and amusement. "You're feeling well, yes?"

 

"I've been a bit tired, but I blame the trip. I've never traveled so before."

 

"These," Oberyn reached up and gently cupped one of her breasts in his hand, supporting it and running his thumb over her nipple as it obligingly tightened under the digit. "Have not been sore?"

 

"Well - I, yes?" Lyarra flushed. "It's just… they grow sore when my courses come."

 

At least, Oberyn reflected, he'd finally convinced her that talk of menstruation didn't either frighten or disgust him. Ignoring his medical training, Oberyn had seven daughters living and had already seen many through puberty. He'd once been blessed with a sister only a year his senior; less if you counted only the time between their births and not the official change in the year. It would take more than moon's blood to bother him.

 

It still didn't change the chagrined realization that Oberyn had just made. He debated for a moment whether he should just say it. He could wait and have a talk with Lady Jynessa, but that was the coward's way out.

 

"Lyarra, when was the last time you had your moon's blood?"

 

"Oh." Lyarra paused, not seeing the significance and obviously just thinking about the date. "It was…"

 

He watched as slow realization began to sink in. Bit by bit he could almost see her counting back, then recounting, and then gray eyes that were nearly black in the dim light of the single lantern glowing from within their tent turned to him. Reflecting in the light, her glaze was almost silvery in an instant, and it was like staring into the moon's glow.

 

"Before we were wed, yes?" Oberyn prompted.

 

They'd been sharing a bed since their wedding, and Oberyn could hardly miss that she'd never had to resort to pinning rags into her smallclothes. He'd never flinched from sharing a bed with Ellaria or any of his other women when they bled. For that matter, he'd never believed in separate beds at all. The Dornish didn't hold with separate quarters for the head of household and his wife; you either shared your bed with your spouse or something was wrong. It had been his first indication that Mellario was not being the wife he wished for his brother when she'd insisted on having her own quarters.

 

" _ Oh _ ." Lyarra spoke again and the word, if the noise she made could be called that, had a whole new meaning as both her hands vanished under the covers to press over her own flat belly. "Oberyn, I didn't know. I mean I knew it could happen, but I  _ forgot _ ! How could I forget?"

 

"You're young yet." Oberyn replied wryly. "And as embarrassing as it is to have a bride young enough to forget her courses, the fact remains that you did and if anyone is at fault, it is myself for not reminding you."

 

"Why didn't you  _ say _ anything?"

 

Now she was upset with him, Oberyn prayed silently the she wouldn't cry. He would yearn for Ellaria Sand for the rest of his life, he was sure. He would grieve for the life he'd had with her, for it was the life he'd chosen and the life he'd wanted. He really,  _ truly _ hoped, however, that Lyarra would not be a crier when she was pregnant as Ellaria had been in the first months of each gestation.

 

"In the first three moons of pregnancy, there is a higher risk of losing a babe because it isn't well-settled in the womb." Oberyn explained. "I didn't want to speak in case you were waiting until you were sure. That's why I've watched you so closely since the fight. Had I thought there was truly a great risk of violence I'd never have allowed you into the Great Hall."

 

"That's why you were so harsh on Ser Arron and the others."

 

"Yes," Oberyn agreed, "Most did not know of your condition, but I had told Ser Arron my suspicions."

 

"He could hardly help that I darted away from him to follow Ghost."

 

"About which we have had words and likely will again judging from the stubborn expression you're now giving me."

 

"It doesn't - why am I arguing with you about this again?" Now she looked a little lost, her hands still idly curled over her belly. "I'm pregnant. Truly?"

 

"Your breasts are tender, and if I'm not mistaken, a little swollen." Oberyn pressed a kiss to her lips and fondled her a little more, toying with the soft flesh in his hand as he rolled onto his side to better face her as they spoke. "You've been nauseous in the mornings, though not much I am happy to say. My daughters treat their mothers well, I'll have you know. You've also been a bit tired, which is another symptom. So, yes, I'd say you're with child, wife."

 

Her breath caught in her throat and a mix of wonder and fear stole over her features. It was a wonderful expression and one he'd never grow tired of, he thought. His heart clenched and Oberyn spared a moment of surprise at the depth of his emotion. Not for his child; he loved the babe already and it was barely more than an idea. No, it was a welling of affection for his wife that hit him, and Oberyn realized all at once that she was coming to matter deeply to him as more than a set of sacred vows and a Mark upon his wrist.

 

Just as he felt a wash of feeling from her wash over him, he carefully rolled atop her, keeping his weight on his forearms as he kissed his way down between her breasts and used his nose to brush aside the slender white hand still covering her belly. He was beneath the covers now, but that mattered not. She could still hear him, and he knew she could feel what he was feeling as well as he could feel her love for their child tangling up with the slow-blossoming emotion growing in regards to him.

 

Oberyn pressed a kiss to the flesh beneath his wife's belly button. As tenderly as possible he framed her hips with his hands and then dropped yet more kisses between them. Nuzzling her belly he murmured a soft greeting to his newest daughter.

 

"I love you well already, and your mother does too." Oberyn pressed another kiss down against the soft white skin. "Your mother is here, and as you're within her she will be with you, always. I will take good care of her, little one, and you will know her well."

 

Above him, Lyarra stifled a sob and Oberyn discarded his earlier plan to trade sweetness for passion and offer her the pleasures of his mouth. Curling up on his side, he drew her onto her own. When Lyarra was wrapped in his arms and he in hers, he pressed a kiss to her forehead and tucked her face against his shoulder. Whispering reassuring things into her hair he let her cry out her grief for the mother she'd never known, and listened to the slow, halting whispers she traded back of all her hopes and fears in becoming a mother herself.

 

They fell asleep without having made love again, but Oberyn couldn't regret it. If anything, he was filled with relief and a sense of peace he hadn't expected to experience again in his life. He'd loved before; briefly, tempestuously, and in the way of a fleeting passion. He'd also held a love in his heart that had grown like a rose in the mountains; flourishing amidst rocks and dangerous debris. Ellaria had not fallen into his life and claimed his heart with great speed; rather she'd stood like a mountain and all of his love had grown up around her until he was too tangled to ever want to be free when she supported him so.

 

Perhaps it was only fitting that this child of the North was slipping into his heart like some seedling tree. Slowly at first, tenderly, and oh-so-fragile. Still, her roots ran deep, Oberyn thought. If he did not uproot it, if he cared for it, mayhaps this bond the Gods had cursed him with might become a blessing. It would not be of his choosing and he'd likely always resent that, but it didn't mean he couldn't love her if he tried. Relieved and at least temporarily peace, the Red Viper slipped off into his dreams with his wife and the soft growing hope of a child curled in his arms.

  
  



	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riverrun: Meet the Tullys. Gwyn chases a snake.

**Chapter Sixteen - 297 A.C.**

 

Lord Hoster Tully, Lord Paramount of the Trident, Master of Riverrun looked at himself in the long mirror present in his sleeping quarters and grumbled.

 

"Vyman, I don't care how fine the damned embroidery is, I'll still be old and sick."

 

The Maester chuckled and nodded.

 

"I've reached the point that adding links to my chain just hurts my neck, your Lordship."

 

Hoster permitted himself a smile and carefully and fully straightened. Today was a _good_ day. The pain in his guts and bowels wasn't plaguing him as it had been doing for the last few moons. He felt well enough to be up and about with a cane, and to make the walk down the stairs from his suite to the Great Hall to receive his guests. He'd have gone all the way out to the gate on pride alone if he hadn't known it to be a mistake in the larger scheme of things. Edmure had to step forward now.

 

Grief, shame and anger briefly burned in his heart. It was all that - _that_ _boy's_ fault. Curse House Baelish for ever having been raised above their station! He'd befriended the lad's father during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. He'd thought that he'd be humble like his father had been and appreciate the notice of his betters, but instead he'd looked beyond anything he had a right to. He'd shamed Lysa and dared to think himself fit for Cat's hand when he was barely worthy to sit at a true lord's table…

 

"Lord Hoster?"

 

Hoster realized his hand was gripping the carved trout head of the cane his Cat had sent him so hard that his knuckles had gone white. He relaxed his grip. He wouldn't think of any of that for the moment. It had been all that was on his mind for more than a year now, until the weirwood rumors had pushed it out. The idea that more infamy was falling upon his House, that his name was being driven deeper into the mud and that it was threatening the only daughter he had yet still living, had hit him hard. He'd had to take to his bed to cope with the pain of whatever was slowly growing to block his bowels and the growths in his gut and the worry clouding his mind.

 

"Dark thoughts." Hoster acknowledged and then chuckled. "I won't think of them now, though. Late Lord Frey, the old weasel, is finally _done_. He’ll waste away what’s left of his life propped up on cushions, under guard, with no more young wives to kill in childbed."

 

"That he is, my Lord, and that he will." Vyman chuckled and Hoster allowed himself a lizard-lion's grin at the idea as he straightened his surcoat once more.

 

It was a fine thing of red and blue, with silver trouts picked across it in fine embroidery. Cat had sent it to him on his last nameday, and the stitchery was his granddaughter's doing. Little Sansa, who was his Cat's spitting image.

 

Cat had also sent him a fine sketch of all of his grandchildren, done in ink and tinted with watercolors. He'd had it put behind a very fine, clear plate of glass and framed to hang in his quarters. All his descendants looked up at him, and if they had some Stark features, he was more than a little proud of the Tully stamp he'd seen put upon the great House Stark's next generation. They'd been Kings of the North once, and held it truly for ten-thousand-years now, but the next Lord Stark would have Tully blue eyes!

 

Now if only he could get that damned _son_ of his wed…

 

The walk down to the Great Hall put a fine sheen of sweat on Hoster's face, but he refused to acknowledge it as he lowered himself into the high seat. Carved of redwood like the doors of the Great Hall, it was a little worn in places. Hoster thought that suited him well. He was getting worn too, and soon he'd need to be replaced as his father before him.

 

From his seat Hoster looked around critically, wanting to make sure all was proper to receive his guests. The Dornish might be a licentious crowd who'd take ambush over an honest fight any day, but they'd done what no other House had done. By holding off the dragons, they'd kept their crown, and though they were Princes now rather than Kings, they had freedoms and prerogatives that no other kingdom held in Westeros.

 

They were also in a place politically that had Hoster wishing that the Gods had been a little freer with their daughters. Knowing he had two granddaughters soon old enough to be wed was a relief, for they'd be in high demand. He'd have to speak to Ned about that. He'd been a good husband to Cat in every way and Hoster was proud to own the boy as his goodson, but he'd always been sentimental. Hoster needed to make sure he understood the value of alliances forged through marriage, and how to prepare a daughter to do her duty.

 

He had to batter down and lock away thoughts of Lysa. He'd failed her so. He hadn't _meant_ to harm her womb with the moon tea. He'd only wanted to spare her the shame of marrying while with child. He'd wanted to save their family the embarrassment of wedding so far beneath them as _that_ _boy_. She'd have never been happy locked in the Fingers, dreary and poor, his dreaming littlest girl… _Gods_ , but what else could he have done? House Arryn needed heirs and so Old Jon Arryn had to take a wife. At least he'd made Lysa a Lady Paramount, and Jon Arryn was kind… He'd never thought she'd own such misery…

 

Hoster shook off the shame again, burying it instead in his anger. All that time clawing for power in King's Landing, but the Gods had punished _that_ _boy_ well. He'd died in agony from what ought to have saved him. Inoculation fevers were rarely bad, but they were no pleasant way to go. He'd _deserved_ it. If only he hadn't shamed them all with those letters…

 

"There'll be ladies present so I'll have no bawdy tunes, you hear me?" Hoster breathed out a harsh warning as he watched Rymund the Rhymer come into the hall. "I don't care what provocation or invitation you get from the Dornish. Just tell them you don't know the tune they ask for if it's not fit for a lady's presence."

 

"Yes m'lord." The bard bowed and scampered to his accustomed place.

 

The other servants needed were arrayed here or there. Most of them would meet the party from out in the yard, but Hoster knew better than to try to walk so far. He wasn't yet so far gone that he'd allow himself to be carried, either. Edmure was with them, so his son could do his duty in welcoming them into the keep. Bread and salt arrayed attractively on a side table waited to be brought forward on silver trays.

 

"How goes progress with the feast?" Hoster wanted to know.

 

Utherydes Wayne had been Riverrun's steward for as long as Hoster had been its lord. He'd grown old, gaunt, and sour but he still did a fine job. Edmure would have to replace him, of course, but Hoster had yet to find the time or the energy to start compiling a list of good choices. Edmure was too damned emotional; he'd have to remind the boy to guard against that. You didn't choose a steward because you liked them. You chose one for their skill, loyalty, and honesty.

 

"It goes well, m'lord, and I'm pleased to say it's right on time." The sour man ventured a smile. "We've two hours and a little until the meats are fully cooked and rested, according to Cook. The breads are laid aside, and we've seen to all the rest. That should give everyone a chance to wash the road dust away and the ladies to dress, and then your guests can feast."

 

Hoster grunted in satisfaction. That was just as it should be. He'd already dressed, and if he knew Ned Stark, the Northerner would take maybe ten minutes to freshen up. His solar wasn't far, so he'd get Edmure to lend him a shoulder and wait there. Then, while the ladies worried over their hair and gowns, and Edmure got the road dust out of his hair, Hoster could have a talk with his goodson.

 

For _now_ , though, Hoster pushed politics from his mind. It caught in his craw a little that Ned Stark's bastard was now a Princess of Dorne. _Sansa_ should have held that title, as one of his blood and a trueborn child. You couldn't predict the Gods, however, New or Old. After the brother whose name he'd gone so long without speaking had sent him a miracle from some mountain heathen claiming the Old Gods had spoken to him from a weirwood tree… Well, Hoster had decided not to try and judge the Gods. They'd judge him soon enough.

 

No-one else had any right to.

 

"You don't look half so dead today, Brother."

 

Speaking of his family's Blackfish…

 

"I wish Cat had made the trip. If she saw you standing here her eyes would get wide as saucers." Hoster allowed himself a laugh as he looked at where Brynden had walked into the room.

 

His younger brother was as hale as ever. Tall, broad, and wearing his usual gray plate and fine surcoat. He wore his family's colors still, even if he had betrayed them to go to the Vale and man the Bloody Gate.

 

Hoster reminded himself to leave that in the past. When the Plague had come, it was family that Brynden had honored. Hoster himself could… well, he could put aside even if he couldn't forgive his brother's other betrayals. He was old and he was dying and he'd missed the annoying, stubborn, old goat. Fitting, really, with his personality that there'd been goats involved in the cure…

 

"They would." Ser Brynden smiled slightly and chuckled back. "I'm looking forward to meeting my new squire. I'd never have thought Lord Stark would have it; he's too Northern, and by all accounts he keeps his children close."

 

"He's sending Arya south with the bastard." Hoster huffed, but relented a little in admiration. "Proper, that. The Snow-girl will not be _the_ Princess of Dorne, but with Prince Doran's daughter dead and no wife, she'll be chatelaine of Sunspear until the man gets his eldest son wed. Then, the Red Viper has status all his own. Arya will learn how a southern court runs, and the Dornish are _powerful_ now. Even our peasants wear their damned sun and spear on their skin, thanks to that Prince's gamble, and I hear half of Essos is sending them gold and jewels in thanks."

 

"Casterly Rock paid for the goats as well." The Blackfish snorted. _"Lannister pride."_

 

"There are rich Houses in Dorne." Hoster speculated. "House Dayne's got a son who'll be lord and dreams of carrying Dawn according to rumor. House Wyl's Heir has no wife yet, and a half-dozen others."

 

"Edric Dayne will own more than one seat now, too, as the Darkstar was executed for treason. Starfall is a gem and High Hermitage is a nigh untakeable fortress. They've also several smaller forts and towers. Not to mention all of the income from the trade up the Torrentine and several important wells."

 

"Yes." Hoster was pleased his brother knew that, but then again, the Daynes were a knightly family and his brother was always aware of any up and coming squires or knights. Martial gossip was the only sort of gossip his brother indulged in. "Arya's a good age for a betrothal, too."

 

"You and your weddings."

 

"You and your damned bachelorhood." Hoster shot back at his brother's wry tone. "And don't you dare start. What am I to do if Edmure doesn't wed before I die? Should I be burned on the river not knowing my name's secure? I don't want a Stark in Riverrun, for all that Cat's children are a comfort to me. _She_ writes proper letters."

 

"Once you started writing back, I wrote." His brother argued.

 

"A few lines, mayhaps."

 

"A half-scroll at least and you know it."

 

"Hmph… Bran's a good age for a squire. A bit young, but that'll be good for him."

 

"I like taking a squire young, if I can manage it." Brynden agreed. "It'll help if I can get his seat settled on the horse with a lance in mind before he starts riding too much like a woodsman. You should see what Lord Redfort has done with Domeric Bolton. Tomorrow I'm going to have him and Edmure out in the tiltyard and have a go myself; the boy's hell in the saddle."

 

"I like the lad." Hoster agreed, then frowned as he looked about. "Where is he?"

 

"Likely already out in the yard, waiting for our guests."

 

"Why aren't _you_ out in the yard? Your legs work well enough for the walk."

 

"I thought my brother might like my company."

 

"Well, it's wearing on me. Go do your duty and stop stalling."

 

"If I don't, you'll what? Threaten me with another wife?"

 

"Old as you are now you'd be a useless husband. I'm saving all the wives for Edmure."

 

"Gods protect him, then!"

 

"Just get your ass out there and send my grandchildren in!"

 

* * *

 

Lyarra was nervous entering Riverrun. If any place she'd ever been on this journey was enemy territory, it was this castle. Even the situation at the Twins had been a matter of circumstances. This was the castle where Lady Stark had been raised. _Here_ was where she'd been taught that bastards were all cursed children of sin, destined to do evil to their families.

 

In the end she found that it wasn't as bad as she feared. Or, rather, entering the castle and being received by Lord Hoster Tully wasn't that bad. His son had been a bit chilly towards her for a day or so, and then Edmure Tully's naturally friendly nature had shown through and he'd been too busy locked in long talks with Lord Stark during the days on horseback to pay her much mind.

 

When he did, it was to be absentmindedly gallant in a way that Lyarra both appreciated and found annoying. She wondered if all southron knights would treat her such; praising her beauty and ignoring everything that came out of her mouth as though she hadn't a brain in her head.

 

Lyarra found herself grateful for her husband. As annoying as Oberyn could be, he always listened and never treated her as less than a person. Well, he was occasionally condescending about her age, but he usually stopped once she started prodding at him about being older than her father. The age gap nettled her Viper.

 

"You worry too much, Lyarra, the Trout Lord's too much a part of the Game to disdain you." Oberyn's voice slipped up as quietly as he did, but she hardly jumped.

 

"The Game of Thrones." Lyarra agreed, frowning. "Neither you nor Gwyn have explained precisely what that is."

 

She'd seen him approach in the mirror. The further south they got, the more the Prince her husband looked. The summer grew hotter the further they went, and the Viper appreciated it. Lyarra could have done without the extra work Riverrun's humidity meant her hair required, but she was pleasantly surprised to find she didn't mind the heat; it settled deeply into her bones, like something liquid and languid. It left her tired, though, and she kept slipping unintentionally into naps in the wheelhouse.

 

Or at least Lyarra kept assuming it was the heat. She felt her face flush as she thought of the other option. As if following her thoughts, her husband's right hand slipped around her and rested over her belly.

 

"You're very tempting tonight, darling." Oberyn murmured instead of answering as he pressed up against her back. "How is my daughter treating you?"

 

With eight daughters to his name already, Lyarra could hardly argue about his certainty, but she felt a twinge of something every time he said it. Part of that was nervousness. Part of it was the vivid dream she kept having of a little boy with her cheekbones and his nose. She'd been too busy worrying about being a proper wife and a princess, of all of the inconceivable things, to even notice she was with child, but the dream remained.

 

Now she fretted about everything else. She'd never had a mother. As much as she wanted to be a good one, what if she just couldn't figure out how? It was an alarming, overwhelming reality to face.

 

"Melancholy wolf." He accused, and Lyarra found herself turned his arms and forestalled whatever he was about to say about cheering up and not worrying by kissing him.

 

He allowed the distraction with enthusiasm, but when his hands started to wander she pulled back.

 

"Don't you dare muss me." She glared at her husband and reached up to reorder her curls and her gown.

 

"But it's one of my duties as a husband. As a Stark do you not take duty very seriously? I know not what to say if you're asking me to shirk mine. Are you feeling well?"

 

"I'm feeling fine." Lyarra couldn't help smiling a little as she rested her own hand on her belly, still awed at the thought of her own child growing inside of her. "We're fine. I'm just a little tired. I don't have the energy to put myself to rights if you muss me, and Gwyn's helping Walda dress now."

 

"Ah, yes. That would be _quite_ a task."

 

Lyarra shot him a dark look and her husband shook his head and held up his hands, grinning.

 

"I don't mean it as a slight against the girl. House Frey put no effort into poor Lady Walda's wardrobe. Lady Jynessa mentioned the work you've all gone to trying to put her to rights before we get to King's Landing."

 

Lyarra relaxed, noting that her husband wasn't mocking her newly acquired lady-in-waiting and friend. Walda would never be a beauty, but if you ignored her weight, she was pretty enough. The girl was endlessly cheerful and worked hard to make the best of every situation. Even Gwyn, who had an endless capacity to be friendly and then stab you in the back unless you were on a very short list of those she truly cared for, was warming up to the other blonde rapidly. It was just difficult not to like the girl once called Fat Walda Frey.

 

"Her gowns are well-made. Walda's a gifted seamstress." Lyarra revealed. "But since they're reworked, some have stains and a lot have marks where old embroidery was pulled out. We're trying to put new embroidery on them to hide it. Gwyn's ready to strangle someone over Walda's stays, too. Apparently Lord Frey insisted that all the ladies wear full, _whalebone_ stays!"

 

"Those went out of fashion at court when my mother was a maiden." Oberyn winced.

 

"Aye, and as whalebone is expensive, Walda didn't even get her own stays, either. She got second-hand stays from an older cousin's wife who was near of a size with her, but built entirely different! She was too afraid to try and resew them because if some other lady of more rank in the family saw her with loose whalebone after she'd cut it free, they'd have taken it and she'd have no way to stop them."

 

"The more I hear of the Freys, the less guilt I feel over having killed three of them in their own home, the executions that followed, or the ones sent to the Wall."

 

"Don't posture, we both know you feel no guilt at all."

 

"Well, they did attack me under guest right."

 

"You _were_ plotting."

 

"Plotting is never disallowed, only _acting_ , which we weren't going to do until after we'd left. Your own father quite agreed to it."

 

Lyarra rolled her eyes, but couldn't quite stop herself from smiling a bit when he leaned in for another kiss, this one lingering.

 

"You still haven't told me how the babe's treating you."

 

"Fine." Lyarra promised. "I'll tell you if anything changes, but I'm just tired. Likely enough it's just from the road and a long day of lessons with the ladies."

 

"Likely enough." He agreed smugly and rubbed a hand over her flat belly again. "My daughters are kind in the womb. You'll enjoy your pregnancy, Lyarra, and grow more beautiful every day. I don't know how you expect me to keep my hands to myself, and I really don't intend to."

 

"You never intend to." Lyarra rolled her eyes and stepped back to look at herself in the mirror and breathed out against the comfortable fit of her own corset and the stiff, but flexible, cording that gave it shape.

 

"Technicality."

 

"We need to be going."

 

"Can't keep Lady Stark's father waiting?"

 

Lyarra refused to acknowledge the truth behind the jape and merely turned towards the door. Her husband smoothly stepped up beside her, offering her arm. Lyarra took it, and felt a hint of her own smugness take hold.

 

Her husband was not one she would have chosen. He was far older than she was. He could be the most difficult man in the world when he chose to be. That said, Oberyn Martell was every inch a princes and she was his princess. There was a certain satisfaction to walking into the Great Hall of Riverrun as a Princess when Lady Catelyn Stark herself had never been more than a Lady there.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn watched in amusement as his host's pride did battle with his desperation. It was written clearly on Hoster Tully's face behind his white beard and blue eyes. Even Ned Stark, who was currently dancing with his elevated bastard daughter, likely saw it. Finally the prince watched as Lord Tully's pride won out and he leaned over to speak to his brother.

 

"Go do something about that, Brynden."

 

"About what?"

 

Ser Brynden Tully had wandered back from the dance floor after enjoying a rather graceless but charming dance with his great-niece. Arya again proved more enthusiastic a dancer than a coordinated one, and halfway through, had stopped dancing to show Ser Bryden some of the footwork she was learning. To what Oberyn had decided was the Blackfish's credit, he'd watched closely and then taken her aside and showed her a variation he knew of the movements before sending her back to sit down beside her grandfather and have a second round of dessert.

 

Gwyn and Walda had gotten their hands on Arya Stark that evening. She looked very nice in the same gray and blue dress she'd worn to Lyarra's wedding. She'd even allowed the girls to put her hair into rags to curl it at some point. A belt hung low about her hips that was made of pale golden wood carved into leaping trouts all bound together by copper rings and river-blue ribbons. Walda had likely done the girl's hair. The heavy set girl's kindness and refusal to look down on anyone had begun to endear her to Arya. It helped that the young she-wolf viewed her as a maiden to be rescued and admired her for leaping to Gwyn's defense in the fight at the Twins.

 

Gwyn would have been solely responsible for the political statement behind her belt and the colors of her dress. Oberyn knew who to thank when messages were being passed through how Lyarra dressed. His wife was more than intelligent enough to think politically, but she often forgot. For all of Gwyn Parren's faults, forgetfulness wasn't one of them. If anything, she had a hunted animal's awareness of its environment.

 

"About Edmure."

 

Hoster Tully's peevish voice drew Oberyn's attention away from Arya. She'd sat down next to her brother, Bran, and beamed once at her grandfather in an absent-minded way. Then she'd proven to need little supervision when supplied with sufficient strawberry cake.

 

"What's the lad doing wrong?" The Blackfish wanted to know, looking up. "He's dancing."

 

" _Exactly_!"

 

"I thought you wanted him dancing with pretty girls."

 

"Not _that_ one!"

 

"What's wrong with the Parren girl? Lady Gwyn seems polite enough. She's a bit young, but she's got good hips, and that's what you want from the boy's future lady, isn't it?"

 

"Not in some knighted city guardsmen's daughter four generations from a title!"

 

"Beggars can't be choosers, Hoster."

 

"Just get up and go cut in."

 

"I'm too old to dance all night, brother. My knee's killing me as is."

 

Oberyn couldn't take the constant bickering anymore without outright laughing. Right now he was safe enough in lounging about at the high table and making observations with Ser Arron about this or that that their daughters would enjoy of the feast. Sarella would be fascinated by the castle's design, as the moat could be flooded to turn Riverrun into an island. Elia would want to talk to Brynden Tully about his own famed days on the lists as a young man. The others would enjoy the general festivities of the dancing and the very nice spread of the feast itself.

 

He missed his girls and it was beginning to grate on him more. Being sure of Lyarra's condition made the ache more intense. There was a fierce joy in knowing he'd be a father again, and a bone-deep smugness in having still quickened her so soon given his age. He'd begotten Obara after one night of passion as a greenboy, and he'd wed Lyarra at nine-and-thirty. Still he'd likely planted his seed on their wedding night or close to it, as she'd never had her courses afterward.

 

More than that, though, Oberyn wanted to be back _home_. He wanted to lay in the sun with Sarella and exchange stories about the latest books they'd read. He wanted to spar with Nym and Obara. He yearned to sit between Tyene and Ellaria's tombs, grief though it would give him, and tell them of this journey and the new wife the Gods had forced on him. He wanted them to know he was growing to care for her, and that he had hopes it would blossom into deeper feelings yet with time.

 

Oberyn missed crossing lances with Elia on the lists. He wanted a chance to introduce Arya, wild little thing that she was, around to all of his children and his nephews and watch as she ran rampant through Sunspear and the Water Gardens. He wanted to watch as Doran's face remained perfectly blank but his own black eyes danced with mirth at the chaos that Arya Stark was undoubtedly going to create once Dorea and Loreza realized they had an older compatriot in mischief. He desperately wanted to balance his littlest girls on his knees and tell them that they were going to be older sisters and watch their delight as the idea played over their faces.

 

They'd been so disappointed when he'd told them they were to be the youngest. He hadn't wanted to risk Ellaria to another labor after Loreza's went poorly, however, and she'd agreed to stay on Moon Tea for the daughters they already had. As far as more children by various women, Oberyn found that he'd aged past the point where he wanted to search out his daughters. If one happened in the result of his and Ellaria's shared pleasure with others, that was just life, but he was no longer being as incautious as his youth.

 

Now, though, Oberyn knew that being big sisters would likely be something that would help Lyarra win the youngest over. They were suffering from the loss of their mother already and would not take the idea of a 'replacement' kindly. Oberyn wanted to be home so that he could begin to smooth over the transition that his unexpected marriage would mean for all of them.

 

"Allow me, my Lord." Oberyn got up, bowed once flippantly at Lord Hoster - who'd apparently forgotten him momentarily as he was speaking to Ser Arron and the brotherly argument had been so engaging - and gestured to where another of his party was perusing the desserts. "Daemon, come, we've damsels to rescue."

 

"I see no beautiful ladies in distress, my Prince, and I've yet to have dessert."

 

"I'll eat it for you." Ser Arron grinned and got up to take the plate and the piece of cake on it out of Daemon Sand's hand.

 

" _Come_." Oberyn insisted, taking his once-squire and past-lover by the shoulders. "Go cut in with the future Lord Tully and Lady Gwyn."

 

"She won't thank me." Daemon protested. "She's spent the last two dances learning everything there is to know about brigandage in the Riverlands, going over the latest crop yields, and establishing what kind of trade is coming out of the Westerlands down the rivers and the easterly roads."

 

"Which I will have Lyarra tax her on later, but for now, go get the girl off his arm before our host has some kind of fit."

 

"Your will is my command." Daemon sighed and shook his head and went to cut in as Oberyn walked over and bowed to a very shocked girl with lemon-blonde hair.

 

* * *

 

"You dance very well, Lord Stark."

 

Ned looked kindly at the girl that the Viper had transferred into his arms when stealing his daughter from him yet again.

 

"You dance well too, Lady Walda. I hope you're not disturbed that I do not prefer the fast steps that the younger men are involved in."

 

"Oh, no, I don't like fast dances. They make me dizzy!" Her earnest reply had him smiling as he lead her through a slow pirouette at his fingertips.

 

She would never be a beauty in his eyes, but Walda Frey was a nice, pleasant, well-meaning girl. She was also much-improved by whatever magic Lyarra and Gwyn had worked on her since taking her into Lyarra's household. Though nothing would make her slim, she no longer looked lumpen beneath her gown, and her large bust wasn't welling up and overflowing like a muffin's top past her gown's neck or bulging at her hips.

 

With her broad figure smoothed out, the blue and white gown she was wearing looked much better on her. It had a great broad girdle and neckline of black embroidery on it done in the kind of geometric pattern that he knew Gwyn could add quickly to any garment with her hooked needle. He'd watched her use it many a night by the fire, after all, as Lady Gwyn tucked herself into the back of their family gatherings and listened to Stark family stories and lessons of an evening.

 

Likewise her hair no longer looked quite so limp or greasy. It was still a brassy shade of blonde, but from whatever feminine magic had been worked on it, was now a soft mass of fine waves around her face. A crown a blue ribbons and little white river flowers added to the bright light in her slate-blue eyes and the Stark felt a well of pride for his daughter. It had been the right thing for Lyarra to do, to get this girl out of the mire that was House Frey.

 

Looking over at where the Viper was dancing with his daughter, Ned felt himself scowl again. He had perhaps two more moons to spend with Lyarra, yet the man couldn't resist monopolizing her attention. Yes, he was her husband, but he had a lifetime ahead of him. Ned had never expected to have to let her go so far from home in the first place.

 

Ned was happy enough to hand Lady Walda off to the dessert table for a chat with Bran. Arya wanted another dance, and he grinned as his wild little girl spun him around. He also mourned her as well, though he knew it was foolish to do so. Some of the happiest years of his life were spent in the Vale with Robert as another brother and Jon Arryn as his second father. He knew his wild little girl would blossom in the desert.

 

The feast carried on in the way of Southron feasts. There was toasting to Prince Oberyn and Lyarra's marriage, Marked and Blessed by the Gods, Old and New. Toasts were made to Lord Stevron Frey, honorable enough to have put his aged father aside and take control of his House. If there was a smugness at Lord Walder Frey's fall to a position where he'd live out his remaining years in captivity at a nearby Septry, well that was another matter. Bran's rising to squire for the Blackfish was toasted and Ned's son beamed, but by the end of the evening his mood had fallen dark and he was happy to remove himself from the revelry early to sit with his goodfather in Lord Hoster's solar.

 

"I want to thank you for your kindness towards Lyarra, Lord Hoster. I appreciate your graciousness more than I can say." Ned lead off with giving the man proper thanks as he settled in with a tankard of ale in his hand and poured a glass of wine for his host as the old man settled wearily into a padded chair in front of the fire.

 

"My own smallfolk think the sun shines out of House Martell's ass." Hoster snorted. "Only an _idiot_ would slight them when half of Essos is sending Prince Doran gold hand over fist in thanks for those blasted goats. I wish I'd thought of it, in retrospect. Not that I had the gold on hand. Dorne gets a lot of trade, and you can't underestimate their mines and salt. Next to the Westerlands, they're likely the richest though they don't share their figures enough for anyone to know. The Dornish never talk about anything you want to hear about them, and when they do talk it's to give you details of their private life that you don't want."

 

"Shame's in short supply in Dorne, that's the truth." Ned grumbled and stifled any disappointment that Hoster Tully's formal, but perfectly polite, reception of Lyarra was political in nature.

 

" _Brilliant_ move, though, everything that happened in the Twins. Getting them to attack you and putting Stevron Frey in your debt? I don't know that I'd have had the patience to do all of that myself without acting before I'd settled guest right properly, but you got them to dishonor their own House!"

 

"Actually, most of that was the Red Viper." Ned shook his head and scowled. "I would have preferred to handle it directly, out in the open, and call for trials… but, again, apparently a servant let Lord Stevron's plans slip to Aenys Frey and the attack prevented us from doing it in the proper order. I'm sorry that we couldn't have handled things as I first intended."

 

"Edmure needed the chance to make a ruling over something other than petty brigands. It was better this way."

 

"Aye." Ned could agree with that. "My goodbrother could use more chances to shoulder his responsibilities, and guidance in serious matters."

 

Ned had spent the entire ride from the Crossing to Riverrun trying to get a feel for his goodbrother, and then worrying when he did. Edmure Tully seemed as decent a fellow as you could wish. He might have whored less, but he wasn't irresponsible so much as carefree. Ned was reminded of a less boisterous and more gentle-hearted Robert in his youth, before the Rebellion had hardened all of their hearts. He was also reminded a little of himself, and that was worrying. He'd never been meant to be Heir to the North, but Edmure Tully should have been raised to be a Lord Paramount from birth.

 

"He's too flighty. The boy needs a _wife_ and a few children to settle him down and give his poor father some peace of mind."

 

"A good, solid wife with practical sense would be a blessing." Ned agreed. "I cannot tell you how blessed I am in Cat. In my early years I knew little of ruling and her advice was a gift from the Gods."

 

Hoster Tully beamed smugly at his goodson in response to the praise for his daughter.

 

"Cat's a treasure."

 

"Aye, always."

 

"Arya's a bit wild. She's got the look of your sister, as does the new princess."

 

"When Arya grows into her features, she'll be a beauty." Ned agreed.

 

"She'll have many a suitor."

 

Ned heard those words from Hoster Tully's mouth and decided caution was more in order than he thought. Apparently he _absolutely could not have_ a casual family talk outside of Winterfell. It was some kind of ruling from the Gods, he thought in annoyance.

 

"Yes, though I'm hoping for a Dornish match, if any. Arya has the wolf's blood and will need a husband who guides her spirit rather than trying to crush it and make her something she is not."

 

"Yes, yes, that's important." Hoster Tully's face briefly grew clouded and his eyes pained. "You can't just find a _good_ husband it seems. You must find the right one and a Dornish match would be best. If she's so wild, it might be best to give her time to get to know the boy and grow fond of him before they wed. House Dayne's got a likely enough lad, and there are a few Houses on the borders of the Marches that are rich from trade tolls."

 

"In truth I can barely stand to think of sending my children away, let alone wedding them now." Ned opted for honesty, hoping for a subject change. "It's not as though they're Lord Edmure's age."

 

Hoster Tully scowled.

 

"I don't know what that boy's _thinking_."

 

Ned congratulated himself for an excellent strategic feint and went in for the kill.

 

"He seemed to admire Lady Gwyn quite a bit."

 

Hoster looked pained.

 

"Your fosterling is a nice enough girl. I'd take her in a heartbeat if she was of better blood, but Edmure needs a _proper_ match. A good one to a woman who'll make a proper Lady Paramount and who can run this castle when he's out running the Riverlands themselves. You wouldn't believe the women I've paraded in front of him. Whent, Blanetree, Blackwood, Vance, Wode. I've had every lady of decent birth and acceptable dowry in my demesne in front of that boy and still he shirks his duty! I ask you, Ned, what's a father to _do_?!"

 

"Mayhaps you need to look elsewhere?" Ned suggested.

 

"I've thought of that, but the nearest ladies are either of the Vale or the Westerlands. I'll tolerate no uppity lioness in my wife's place, pushing me aside like I'm some dotard."

 

"The Vale won't send its daughters without a betrothal in place." Ned nodded in understanding and then felt a trap he'd accidentally laid for himself snap shut as his goodfather spoke again.

 

"Mayhaps a good Northern lady." Hoster suggested slyly. "Your bannermen weren't as wracked by the plague as others."

 

"True."

 

Ned felt supremely awkward in plotting out anyone's marriage. He'd come to love Cat and she and their children were the greatest blessing in his life. However, nothing would change the strain of their first few years of marriage. Years where Ashara Dayne's violet eyes haunted him in his sleep and where Cat once called out his brother's name in their marriage bed. He didn't blame her, though it had hurt him a great deal as a young man. He hoped that Cat didn't blame him, either, though he knew she'd never forgive him for having claimed a bastard and brought the child into their marriage.

 

Beyond that, Ned couldn't help thinking of his own father. Rickard Stark's Southron ambitions had cursed their family. Lyanna's betrothal had seemed a dream to him, for Robert had promised him a castle with a dying line in the Stormlands after the wedding. His original plan would have him wed Ashara and living within a day's ride of his best friend and baby sister, a castle of his own, and firm in the knowledge that his brother held the North. Instead Brandon and his father had died horribly. Lyanna had seen her betrothal as a curse. Everyone had suffered.

 

Ned refused to risk _any_ of his children running away as Lyanna had. He wouldn't sentence even one of them to the grief that was a bad match. He wouldn't say anything of it to Hoster Tully, but just look at the disaster that was Cat's sister. A lost maidenhead, a child gone before it lived, kinslaying or close to it, and then years of grief, failed pregnancies, and death by her own hand. _No_ , all of his children would have a say in their marriages, though Ned did plan to provide them the options they chose from.

 

He definitely wasn't going to get drawn into Hoster Tully's endless desire to arrange more marriages within his family. Looking up into the man's sly blue eyes, however, gave him an idea. Ned smiled warmly as he realized he had the perfect way never to be asked again.

 

"Actually, I've a good lady in mind whose mother's lamented ever seeing her wed." Ned sat back and took a deep pull of his drink. "She's not too young now, closer to twenty than fifteen, and she's a strong woman. Tall, with long dark hair, and a full figure. Her family is one of my most loyal bannermen and no-one in the North crosses them without great care."

 

Hoster Tully began to visibly perk up.

 

"Is the family fertile?"

 

"She's one of several children."

 

"And her dowry?"

 

"Modest, I'll allow, likely not much better than Gwyn's." Ned replied honestly. "However, if Edmure will have her…"

 

"You're right, you're right. If her blood’s proper I can overlook the dowry." Hoster was quick to agree, his tone hungry as the old man sat forward. "Do you think he _would_? Be interested, that is. I don't know what it is about the little Parren girl that got him to pay her so much mind."

 

"I imagine it was her, really. Gwyn's got a talent for making people feel important." Ned allowed, but didn't add that it was a gift directed entirely at tricking others into telling her what they knew. "The youngest son of a great lord with two beautiful, intelligent older sisters… Lord Hoster, to be honest, that's something that worried me on my way here. At the Twins and since then, Edmure's seemed to me to have the habit of swaying to the will of others. He doesn't seem to trust his own opinions, or where he does, he doesn't stop and ask himself the right questions."

 

"I know." His goodfather rubbed a hand down his face and scratched his beard. "I was gone too much when the boy was growing, then that fool brother of mine _abandoned_ us…"

 

"It was good to see the Blackfish here."

 

"Heh, surprised you, didn't it?"

 

"Cat doesn't know you're talking."

 

"Well, if she'd come she would. I understand why she had to leave, though. If you don't mind, I've bid my brother to go back North with you for a year, or at least a few moons. He's decided to give the Bloody Gate back to Lord Arryn. He wants no part of the succession mess in the Vale, and I don't blame him. Jon Arryn needs to leave the King with another Hand for a few months and get his House in order. You might offer to help with that, Ned."

 

"I wouldn't shirk a duty to a friend or the kingdom." Ned replied uncomfortably. He didn't want to. "I've no gift for politics, though. A better Hand could be easily found."

 

Hoster hummed and nodded in acknowledgement.

 

"Still, Bran's a good age for a lad to squire, but he'll miss home. Let Brynden ride north with him and that Bolton lad and then come south to Riverrun again after he's grown a little."

 

"I agree." Ned latched onto the chance to bring his boy home with both hands.

 

"And you can send some of your ladies south." Hoster went on, warming up to the idea. "Send Sansa with them, I'm happy to meet two of my grandchildren, and I know there must be a Stark in Winterfell and all that, but a man wants to know all of his grandchildren before he dies."

 

"I'll do one better." Ned promised. "It'll have to wait until I’m back in Winterfell, but I'll send Sansa south with her mother and Rickon. Robb can come to escort them. I'll stay north as the Stark in Winterfell with Bran and your brother."

 

Hoster Tully beamed and Ned congratulated himself. This would surely undo all of his goodfather's plans. After a Mormont and a couple ladies of House Umber descended on Riverrun, Ned Stark knew he'd never be asked to matchmake again.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra wanted to go into the Godswood to pray under the moon and Lady Gwyn wanted to collect mushrooms. The end result was pleasant, Oberyn allowed as he wandered in the heavy, warm night air and inhaled the scent of apple blossoms that was heavy in the air. The Riverrun Godswood was more of a garden than a wild, ancient place, but it had a weirwood with a carven face. He'd hardly deny Lyarra the pleasure of enjoying it and some prayers there. As it was, he wasn't even sure the delicate little weirwood sapling being so carefully tended amidst their luggage would even survive in Dorne. So he felt it best to indulge her prayers now in case her attempt at planting a Godswood in an underutilized section of the Sunspear gardens failed.

 

"Do you plan to ride in the tourney, Your Grace?"

 

Besides, the Godswood had a _lot_ of pretty scenery that night. If Oberyn couldn't make use of that prettiness, he could at least admire it. Domeric Bolton was just lacking enough in worldliness to not take offense as well.

 

"The Tourney?" Oberyn asked curiously and got a small smile in return.

 

Ser Domeric Bolton was a handsome young man. A year or two older than Lyarra, he'd grown to equal Oberyn's height and might yet gain an inch or so more. He was an athletic young man, with broad shoulders and narrow hips covered in good, clean muscle.

 

His skin was very fair and his hair a dark brown the color of burnt tea leaves. The thick hair fell in waves around his face and down about his shoulders, emphasizing a long, angular face with a high-bridged blade of a nose between sharp cheekbones. It was a long, very Northern, face but where it would have been drawn-out and pallid, it was softened by a pair of full lips, a strong jawline, and a smooth brow.

 

His eyes were unusual. Neither gray nor blue, they were so pale they were nearly colorless. A kind nature showed in his eyes, though, taking the jarring lack of pigment and translating it from uneasy to striking. The sensual nature of his mouth and quiet way of moving and holding himself helped soften his looks as well.

 

"Aye, Ser Brynden had it from Lord Jon Arryn that there's to be a tourney held to celebrate Lord Stark's arrival at King's Landing and your marriage to Lady Lyarra." The young Northern knight went on.

 

They'd already made smalltalk as Lyarra engaged in her prayers. The young Heir to the Dreadfort had been leaving the Godswood when they arrived, but had paused and joined Oberyn when he'd complained that the ladies were abandoning him for the trees. Lyarra to pray, of course, and Gwyn to poke around in the dark for edible fungus. Of course, had the handsome young lord not been present to amuse him, Oberyn would have been looking for poisonous mushrooms along where the river ran by the Godswood, but that was another matter altogether. Besides, it would be better if he could do that tomorrow morning and include Arya and the other girls in the lesson.

 

"I don't know that I _approve_ , considering what rumors I've heard of the Crown's finances, and the state of the smallfolk there. Lord Redfort told me inflation was a serious problem in the Capitol." Domeric Bolton went on, idly tugging at the hem of his rich pink velvet surcoat and then straightening the sleeves on the simple black tunic he wore beneath it. "I'm guiltily glad for it, though. I'm to head north and I've never ridden in a tourney for all that Lord Redfort spoke so well of my jousting."

 

"Ah, well, Ser Brynden would have me and other knights of my party join you and himself on the tiltyard tomorrow morning, so even if I choose not to ride in King's Landing, you'll get your chance against me."

 

Oberyn briefly considered making a jape about the handling of lances. He decided against it with a certain bitter sadness. He couldn't follow through, after all, on the very slim chance that the boy might show such inclinations for adventurousness in bed. If anyone Dornish expanded his horizons, it would have to be Daemon Sand.

 

"Truly?"

 

"Assuming the ladies don't keep me up all night wandering in the woods." Oberyn called lightly over to where his wife had finished her prayers and was now throwing a sycamore branch for Ghost, who was happily capering about. Her white fur was glowing eerily in the moonlight.

 

"But I thought you _approved_ of my keeping you up all night, my Prince!" Lyarra called back playfully, her eyes catching the Bolton lad's and then widening to confirm she'd forgotten the quiet boy was even there.

 

Oberyn threw her head back and laughed as the two pale Northerners got into a contest to see who could blush more severely.

 

"I am corrupting you, darling. How delightful!" Oberyn bragged and walked over towards her with his intentions written all over his face. "Mayhaps I might corrupt you so far as to truly enjoy the Godswood this fine nig- _ooph_!'

 

Ghost, having retrieved her stick after its last throw, impacted with the back of Oberyn's knees and sent him staggering. He caught himself against a pear tree and shot the young direwolf a glare. Ghost turned and narrowed her red eyes at Domeric Bolton as if it was somehow his fault that the young she-wolf was no more than a clumsy, big-footed pup despite now being the size of a large, full-grown, hound.

 

"When she's full grown, Princess Lyarra, Ghost will be _terrifying_." Ser Domeric said sincerely and took a cautious step back from the silent snarl he was being directed.

 

Satisfied, Ghost looped forward to offer Oberyn the stick. Taking it he held it up in the air and made her jump for it a few times in revenge before he threw it for her. The young she-wolf darted off again chasing it.

 

"I'm sure you'll do the North proud in the Tourney, Ser Domeric." Lyarra stepped forward toward Oberyn's side, but faced the other Northerner instead in a clear message of disapproval for his insinuations. "Though we don't often participate in them."

 

"They're a waste of gold and reveal too much of our talents in warfare." Domeric admitted with a guilty smile. "I must confess to a weakness, however. I _love_ to ride. My Aunt Bethany swears I was all but born on a horse."

 

"Your poor mother." Oberyn muttered to himself and grinned and caught his wife's elbow with one hand, turning her with the blow and tucking her against his side happily in response.

 

He'd teach her how to break that hold the next morning. Carefully, of course! He had to be mindful of her condition, but as long as they took care, it was no reason to stop their sparring yet. He enjoyed the way it heated her blood and his own too much to give it up easily, and she was gaining skill daily. After the babe was born Obara would enjoy having another lady about who loved the training yard over the ballroom.

 

"My brother Bran is much the same, and dreams of being a knight as well." Lyarra ignored him, though she did pinch his hip roughly. Oberyn slid a hand down and patted her rear end approvingly, ignoring the way she stood stiffly as he did it and the rapidly growing look of trapped discomfort on the young knight's face.

 

"He's lucky in being the squire of a knight with a reputation such as the Blackfish has."

 

"He is. Tell me, since House Bolton doesn't follow the Seven, how did you manage your knightly vows?" Lyarra asked. "I've always been curious about that."

 

"I stood vigil in the Godswood, and I wrote my own vows to be anointed under." Oberyn felt his lips quirk up a little at the young man's small, guilty smile. "The blessed oil we used was actually infused with weirwood sap. I came up with the idea, and my father sent some down. I was surprised he bothered, for Father is not… an _indulgent_ man."

 

Oberyn had met Roose Bolton. If he'd had to describe him, indulgent would not have been the term. Disturbing fit fairly well. Emotionless wasn't bad either. Heartless would do in a pinch.

 

"I'll have to make a showing at the tourney, when I ride." Domeric went on in the tone of a boy driven to confession by a rare friendly ear. "Father tolerates no failure and he looks to me to earn our name acclaim. House Bolton is known for little beyond our brutal past, but I would have us truly respected in the North, rather than simply feared for our power and our reputation for brutality."

 

Oberyn's wife was now openly smiling at the boy. Oberyn wasn't a jealous man by nature, but he found it irking him a little. Sexually he'd never been possessive before, but he'd also never been Marked nor restricted in his own partners. He was growing fonder of Lyarra and believed that in time he'd love her. He thought he felt the same growing within her along with his child, but seeing her smile that wide, beaming grin at a younger man from her own homelands…. Well, he found it bothersome.

 

"I understand wanting to prove who you are beyond a name." Lyarra, once known as Snow, replied earnestly.

 

"Lyarra!" Gwyn's excited, happy yell came from further in the Godswood. "Call off Ghost before she eats my new snake!"

 

"Gwyn, you cannot _keep_ snakes!" Lyarra automatically protested. "It might be poisonous. What about the spiders? You've already got a _jar_ of spiders!"

 

"Don't be a hypocrite, look at who you're married to! Ghost, no, _my_ snake!"

 

Oberyn Martell threw back his head and laughed at the confused expression on Domeric Bolton's face.

 

"Call your direwolf, darling, and I'll go recapture our budding naturalist." Oberyn volunteered and decided to make use of the young man and a rare opportunity. "Ser Domeric, if you'd please escort the Princess back to the guest rooms?"

 

He'd been trying to catch Gwyn Parren alone since the Twins, but Lyarra had grown more protective of her friend as she slowly inched her way out of her shell again as she had begun to since that day. He hoped he was not about to undo that progress. Sometimes he still struggled with the girl's looks and her origins, but after his talk with Arya about her shaking fits and nightmares, he was having more success directing his hatred where it belonged: at the Lannisters.

 

"I would be honored, Your Grace." Ser Domeric bowed, Ghost loped back towards Lyarra as if sensing that she was wanted, and Oberyn ignored Lyarra's suspicious look entirely as he headed further into the godswood.

 

He found Lady Gwyn Parren finally looking like a girl of three-and-ten. The false air of maturity that clung to her expression and her controlled mannerisms were gone. She had climbed up a sturdy old holly, and sat on a low limb with her feet dangling down. Her fair blonde hair gleamed like a single fall of sunlight in the silver light of the moon, and her eyes were dark pools.

 

"Ah, a common green tree snake." Oberyn admired. "We have the like in Dorne as well."

 

Gwyn regarded him carefully from her perch and Oberyn reached down and picked up her abandoned basket of mushrooms to set it out of the way. She'd cast it hastily aside to climb the tree, it seemed. Glancing inside he checked and confirmed that nothing poisonous had been accidentally picked, but he'd noticed the girl's skills in cooking long before. Apparently gathering food was part of that.

 

"They're everywhere. They even go north of the neck, and only one other species of snake I've found does that." Gwyn allowed, but made no move to get down from the tree. "No snakes go north of Winterfell, according to Master Luwin and Old Nan."

 

Oberyn sat on the ground, letting her loom up over him. He took care not to be too close, though. Lyarra's age occasionally ambushed him and made him uncomfortable. He had no desire whatsoever to accidentally see up Gwyn's skirt.

 

"I imagine that when those two sources agree with each other, debate is fruitless."

 

"Usually, Your Grace."

 

Silence drifted onward and Oberyn clamped down on his impatience. Instead he summoned up an image of his daughters in his mind's eye. Impatient Obara, demanding to learn the spear now. Sarella, voracious for knowledge and forgetting to return his gauntlets because she'd needed them to collect scorpions. Picturing this girl's jar of spiders helped, for it reminded him of mischief that Tyene had caused, and with the grief came a hint of affection for a child he knew he shouldn't restent and helped him relax. Gwyn interpreted tension (and almost anything else most grown men did) as threat. He did not want her afraid of him anymore.

 

Eventually the snake desired freedom and the living emerald ribbon was permitted to slither away. Gwyn stayed in the tree, however, nervously looking down at him. Realizing he may have inadvertently treed the girl like a hound did a housecat, Oberyn stood up and wandered slightly away. His instinct was to offer any lady help climbing down from anywhere, though why a lady would be in a tree was a varied thing, but he held back and let her come down on her own. When she had he took a seat again and let her stand.

 

"I would like to make a deal with you, Lady Gwyn."

 

She watched him like that snake had likely stared at Ghost.

 

"A _deal_?"

 

"Yes."

 

Oberyn kept his tone low and moderate and tried to imagine how his brother would sound. Doran, Oberyn thought bitterly, would have had far better success convincing the girl she was safe. Ironic, considering that he was an acclaimed warrior known across Westeros and Essos and his elder brother was weakened by age and gout. He went on.

 

"I would like to make a deal where I would ask you questions. If you don't feel comfortable answering them, then don't. Instead, tell me _why_ you won't give me an answer."

 

Gwyn watched him for a few minutes. Then the girl slowly slid down with her back against the tree she'd climbed. She gathered her basket into her lap, as though its weight comforted her. Finally, facing him as he sat with his back to a hawthorn tree, the girl nodded.

 

"Do you know who killed my sister and her children?"

 

Oberyn couldn't keep his voice from growing low and hoarse and angry, but he tried. The girl's hands were visibly shaking. He cursed his impatience and was surprised when, low and having to swallow repeatedly to get it out, she spoke.

 

"Feed the living, bury the dead."

 

" _What_?" Oberyn asked, his temper flaring up even as he tried to muzzle it. Fortunately his tone remained even, and while he could feel his face shifting into a harsh scowl, the girl had closed her eyes against the effort of speaking.

 

"We say it." She managed to gasp. "Back home. In the Westerlands… We've poor soil and we're further north than you are. Winter hits us _hard_ sometimes, when it does there is never enough food for anyone but the richest lords. You h-have to put aside your gripes. You have to forget slights and - and everyone works together to save everyone. If we don't, only the Stranger eats."

 

Oberyn took a deep breath, nodded, and was rewarded when she opened her eyes to look at him with the fear of someone who expected punishment but saw no way to escape it. He moderated his breathing further and held up his hands, slowly and carefully, palm out. The fear was like a knife to his breast on the face of this child he'd just seen chase a green snake up a tree out of fascination. Oberyn thanked the Gods for it. His temper twisted like the Viper he was named after and went in search of better targets.

 

"You're afraid of the Gods punishing Lyarra if I get killed."

 

"Your lives are bound for the first year, maybe more, or until a child is born but sometimes that's not enough, either." The little blonde girl spoke, the words tumbling out. "Lyarra doesn't understand how things work outside of the North. She doesn't know what it's like. Someone has to protect her from that."

 

"True, but that is my duty as her _husband_ , isn't it?"

 

"You have a duty to your sister, too."

 

The words were spoken quietly, and there was a pain there that led to Oberyn closing his eyes. He appreciated her understanding that he hurt. He focused on that rather than his anger and was pleased when, again, he kept it focused where it belonged. The same man who'd seen his sister and her babes slaughtered had terrified _this_ child. He had to remember that.

 

"I do." Oberyn acknowledged quietly. "Why do you believe I will die?"

 

"All of Twyin Lannister's enemies die."

 

There was some hint of evasion there and she wouldn't meet his eyes, but Oberyn didn't press. That wasn't the objective this night. He had some information. He wanted more. More importantly, however, he wanted to build some trust with the child. For once he wasn't the right Martell Prince to rescue a beautiful maiden from her fears, but he was determined not to fail. He'd waited nearly five-and-ten years on Doran's slow work to avenge Elia and her children. He could channel some of Doran's patience and the gentle spirit he'd lavished once on a wild younger brother if it would help Elia's justice bear fruit.

 

"I've waited a long time, I can wait further if necessary." The words hurt, but Oberyn forced them out and watched the blonde head snap up and blue eyes regard him with a sudden suspicious hope. "Why are you so scared, my lady?"

 

A thousand things flickered across the girl's pretty face, but in the end, it shuttered. He thought she would get up then. Maybe to run away from him, maybe to just dispel some of her fear with movement. Instead she surprised him by answering in a barely audible whisper heavy with truth.

 

"Powerless."

 

"What?"

 

"I'm _powerless_ , Prince Oberyn." Gwyn Parren's voice raised slightly, the whisper carrying and the expression she turned to him was ancient in its exhaustion and the deep-seated anger that underpinned it. "House Parren cast me aside, and I was lucky they did that much to protect me. Lord Stark took me in, but his strength is only great north of the Neck. Now I'm in your care, but you're just another man like he is. Men die, and yet the world has made you infinitely more powerful than women. I'm entirely at your mercy and the mercy of anyone with more wealth, more clout, or more beauty than I have. I can do nothing when something threatens me or those I love. _That_ is why I am scared."

 

Crickets sang around them and Oberyn breathed slowly. His own fists were clenched. He let the silence drag out until he heard her fidgeting again, though he noticed in surprise that her hands no longer shook where they were clenched around her basket.

 

"I cannot help but wonder if that was not my sister's final horror." He muttered, reaching up and running a hand over his face to feel the cold sweat that had broken out there. "To feel such."

 

Gwyn Parren said nothing, but she was nodding woodenly. Oberyn couldn't bring himself to ask if she was agreeing. He'd have to demand why, and it would undo any progress he'd made. Still, he couldn't quite help going on again. It was not in his nature to be restrained.

 

"Ser Stevron Frey told me that a knight of House Lorch killed my niece, the Princess Rhaenys."

 

Gwyn Parren's head snapped up and she worried at her lip with her even white teeth. After a while she licked her lips and looked off to the side, then up into the tree, then off again as if fighting some internal battle. What happened next left Oberyn happy he was seated.

 

"Amory Lorch."

 

Silence stretched out before Oberyn broke it in a ragged voice.

 

" _What_?"

 

"I-" The girl paused to swallow, then went on in a strained whisper. "They - at the Rock they say half-a-hundred men were in the room when the little Princess was murdered. Not that there’s ever been a bed chamber that could hold that many. Only one _brags_ of it. _Ser Amory Lorch_ is a stupid, mean, petty idiot of a man. Even his kin hates him. He's - he's got no real favor with Lord Twyin and has traded too often on the Sack. If he were to die quietly, j-just _vanish_ , then nobody would ask questions. It wouldn't be dangerous. Unless you were a total idiot he'd be no match for you in a fight."

  


Oberyn could barely breathe past the sound of the blood rushing inside his ears. A _Name_ . After all these years and all of his anger, he finally had a _Name_.

 

" _Thank you_ , Lady Gwyn." He breathed out, real gratitude in his tone. He could hear the girl swallowing and was surprised when she spoke again.

 

"Or he could have an accident at the tourney. If Ser Domeric is right and there's to be a tourney, he'll try for it. He's greedy, but not good enough to win purses, usually."

 

"An attractive option." Oberyn allowed and moved a little closer to the girl, rising very slowly so as not to spook her. "It would be nice to use my unjust reputation for maiming unwary knights on the list so. I'll have to tell Willas of it someday, he'll appreciate it."

 

Gwyn looked at him, her expression confused while her breathing had sped up as if she'd just run for her life. Oberyn felt his heart clench for the girl, suddenly. She looked like a Lannister, that much was true.

 

"Lions eat their young sometimes, I'd heard."

 

"Wolves don't." Gwyn looked up at him, and then allowed him to draw her to her feet as she shivered in the warm night air. "I was raised by wolves, too… Who's Willas?"

 

"Lord Willas Tyrell of Highgarden, Heir to the Reach." Oberyn replied lightly. "I unhorsed him after the Fat Flower he calls a father pushed the boy into jousting before he was ready. His foot caught in the stirrup and his knee ended up shattered and ruined. I've been blamed since for crippling the lad, some say intentionally, though I sent my own Maester to see to him. We've been friends since. Willas loathes being captive to expectation. I believe he would like you. However, as I think his grandmother would attempt to steal you I will not be introducing you any time soon."

 

"Lords Paramount and their Heirs are too rich for me, anyway."

 

The half-truthful sally made Oberyn smile and he led the girl back to the castle. Finding his wife already in bed in a shift (a sure sign she expected to be wroth with him if there was any) he took advantage of it and handed Gwyn over into Lyarra's care. Pressing a kiss to his wife's hair he picked up the neat folding lap desk he kept his papers in. Then, adjurning to the small sitting room attached to his suite, he wrote his brother.

 

He would plan the specifics of the next life he took later. For now he wished to send a raven to Doran. After all these years they had a Name. More would follow, he was certain of it.

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb Stark begins to understand this politics thing. Ned Stark does not like boats. Edmure Tully should really think before he says things.

**Chapter Seventeen - 297 A.C.**

 

Lord Edgar Waterman was staring at him in shock, yet Robb firmly ignored the fifty-year-old man. Lord Waterman was a staunch ally of House Stark and a good man, but Robb had bigger fish to fry at the moment. If that meant hauling nets, then he'd haul fishing nets.

 

"You've had a good catch today!" Robb observed proudly, putting his back into moving the heavy netting and the haul of salmon it currently contained from the river. "Have you had much trouble with bears this year?"

 

"No more'n usual, m'Lord." The young man, a year or so older than Robb, standing closest to him replied with an expression of surprised delight on his face. "There's one with a great white scar across his nose who's a right nuisance, but we've fire and spears handy at night to deal with 'im when he comes prowling."

 

"If he's been around the docks, he's more a danger than a nuisance. You mean he comes up to the docks don't you? Right here?"

 

"Yes, m'Lord." A gray haired elder who was all lean height and wiry muscle shot his grandson a sharp look for his bravado and stepped forward from where he'd tied the family's small boat up.

 

They were on one of the many small lakes that branched out into the hills above the Rills. House Waterman held the land around this particular small lake, and the stout keep they called their seat sat above them. Waterhouse Fort was composed of two towerhouses joined by a hall and then surrounded by a high earth berm only topped by a stone wall in Robb's grandfather's youth. It was a good keep though. Strong, sturdy, and growing in prosperity thanks to careful management of the fisheries, Lord Waterman was a solid ally to House Stark despite having only been raised to the rank of lord during the Rebellion.

 

"If it breathes, Greywind can track it." Robb declared, looking around and spotting a few fresh claw marks in the sturdy, wet lumber of the docks. His direwolf had been insistently sniffing around the dock since they arrived, and a few low growls had been what prompted him to step forward and ask. "Are those its marks?"

 

"Aye, it dug in with its claws." The old fisherman nodded towards the long scrapes in the lumber. "Took everything we had to drive it off and it broke Evan's leg in the process. A bear that big coulda' taken his leg clean off with a swipe of its paw, but he was lucky the torches gave it a fright. It still tore down two racks of drying fish we was smoking."

 

"Winter's coming, and even with Dorne's help, we can't afford to lose the catch. It's too important." Robb scowled and stepped back.

 

The nets were now where they were supposed to be, and the various men and boys on the docks were dragging salmon from them. Getting out of the way, he slapped a rough palm between the shoulder blades of the young man he'd been speaking with earlier, getting a surprised grin in return, and then moved back to where Lord Waterman was standing. Greywind jogged forward from where he was scratching at the dirt and growling nearby. Burying his fingers in his companion's gray ruff he scratched and nodded before turning towards his host.

 

Theon was a few docks over, happily standing balanced on the rail of a larger boat and helping load it by stacking crab pots while he talked about the weather out on the Bay of Ice. The fisherman was apparently heading out there soon. While he didn't fish the bay himself, the man made crab pots and took them down to a coastal village to sell. He had some deal with a local blacksmith to get him wire for his, rather than twine netting, and so they were in much demand.

 

Robb had left Keavan Forrester with the horses. A quick glance showed that he was still there. It also showed that a hound had wandered up and the man was energetically scratching its belly. Robb decided he knew who to blame for slipping Greywind extra treats. Keavan had a fairly serious nature. Robb was learning he could rely on the tall, sturdy man as a bannerman of his own generation, and he appreciated that. He just _also_ wished that the man's soft-spot for animals didn't lead to him sharing red bean and sausage stew with his direwolf. It led to a rather unpleasantly fragrant tent in the evenings.

 

"Forgive my digression, Lord Waterman." Robb walked up, dusting his hands off and bowing his head and shoulders to the aging bannerman. "My siblings and I have raised these direwolves since before they were weaned, and Greywind doesn't show his teeth without a purpose. When he began snarling at the dock, I had to know why."

 

"Don't apologize for solving a problem, Lord Robb." The older man shook his head and cast a look both cautious and admiring at the young direwolf trotting beside the Heir to Winterfell. "I appreciate a man who's not above himself as a lord, and the smallfolk won't forget it. The bears are always a hassle during the run, but I hadn't heard one was up at the docks."

 

"Nobody wants to be the one to complain. It's not the fault of your people for wanting to save you the burden. Your son's at Flint's Finger right now and can't manage the hunt, after all."

 

"And I'm in no shape for it." The old man agreed wryly, tapping his crutch against the wooden peg that served him for a left leg below the knee. "Aye, can't deny that. Of last year or so, even riding for more than a bit has become too much for my damned old bones. I appreciate you taking care of the nuisance animal."

 

"It will be my pleasure as well as my duty." Robb grinned. "Think of Greywind every time you enjoy your new bearskin rug."

 

Lord Waterman laughed as he hobbled along beside Robb, who carefully kept his pace even with the old man's. His son, Young Edgar, was actually the man's fourth son by his second wife. House Waterman had suffered greatly from stillbirths and childhood illness. As a result the Heir to the House was only a few years older than Robb despite his father being of an age with Robb's grandfather. He was also currently looking for a wife, and not home often.

 

Robb could appreciate that. He'd been propositioned for marriage _(or just plain propositioned)_ by every unwed maiden in the North he came across on his journey to audit the weirwoods and assess the North's readiness for Winter. So far it felt like the only brother or father in the North who wasn't ready to hurl their family's ladies at him with a trebuchet was Keavan Forrester. Robb was growing more sympathetic to his new friend's melancholy over the eventual loss of his sister daily, and Lyarra's last letter hadn't helped the feeling.

 

"You've a way with the smallfolk, Lord Robb." Lord Waterman grunted. "I wouldn't have expected it, as fine a lady as your mother is."

 

Robb resisted the urge to bristle at that. It took a great force of will, but he managed. Snide comments about his mother were something he wasn't precisely used to, but he was slowly gaining an appreciation for just how _slighted_ the North had felt by his father's marriage. He was also realizing how important it would be for him to choose a proper wife. A decision he was now beginning to see would dictate a great deal of loyalty or bad blood where his own rule was concerned.

 

Hopefully the day he had to worry about that would be far, _far_ in the future, but Robb felt as if Lyarra's Mark appeared had opened his eyes in a way. First, in his father finally being forced to include him in important negotiations that showed, sometimes infuriatingly and sometimes sadly, that his father wasn't either as perfect or as universally admired as Robb thought. Secondly, the trip to King's Landing also meant that Robb had the responsibilities of his rank and House for the first time in his life, and as exhausting as they were they were also _exhilarating_ in a way. He'd always wanted to make his father proud. Now Robb had the chance to actually do so.

 

"Mother's still a little nervous. She feels like the North dislikes her and tries to hide from it behind her pride. A fisherman should know that no trout wants to show weakness. If it does, well, some bigger fish is likely enough to come along."

 

"True enough, Lord Robb."

 

"She's been a good wife to my father, and she's given the North five strong children to carry on the Stark name."

 

"She _has_ done that." Real pleasure came into the old man's voice as he agreed and Robb felt himself flush as he realized how much of that was directed at him as they hobbled up to where Keavan held the horses and Robb and the Forrester helped the one-legged man heave himself cautiously up into the saddle. "You've done your father proud, I'll say that. You may look a Tully, but you're as Stark as that wolf of yours."

 

Theon jogged up behind them, panting a bit from the run, but grinning at the chance to talk ships and weather. Or, well, honestly Robb wasn't sure what the Greyjoy talked about when there was water involved. It had done his friend good, though, so Robb was relieved and happy to see it.

 

"Thank you, Lord Waterman." Robb opted to be as polite and politic as his mother had taught him to be.

 

"Who got you talking to the smallfolk, though? Lord Ned's a good lord to every man in the North, and rank has little to do with it, but he's always been the _Quiet_ Wolf. Your Lord and Father's not much for going out and just talking in general."

 

"That was mostly my sister's doing." Robb smiled and felt the sadness in it. "Lya- Princess Lyarra befriended one of our wards. Lady Gwyn Parren, from the Westerlands. Lady Gwyn's father was a very minor knight in Lannisport, and Lady Gwyn liked to go out and haggle with the merchants in Wintertown herself whenever she needed something. She was _forever_ arguing with the spice merchant. It got so bad that he'd see Lady Gwyn coming and try to head the other way, but Lyarra was with her. If Lyarra went, then I went and I'd get talked into standing at the other end of the alley with Lord Theon so the spice merchant couldn't escape."

 

His bannerman let out a deep, rolling laugh at that story and Robb's brief embarrassment at talking so much about his family's personal matters faded.

 

"That sends me back _years_ , to before my sister married."

 

"Yes, I can see how it would."

 

"You miss the Princess, then?"

 

"I do."

 

"I don't blame you, my lord." Old Lord Waterman replied, his expression wistful before it slid into satisfaction. "That said, the Gods smiled on the North when they Marked your sister. You've got to see that. Even in punishing your father they did Lord Ned and the North a good turn."

 

"With the grain and dried fruits and everything else coming in, you won't see children staggering around with the scurvy." Keavan, who'd been seated quietly upon his tall bay mare, added in a fiercely proud tone.

 

"Not this time." The old man agreed passionately, and grinned. "And there's more to come. I've made a deal through your father to send a lot of peat south to Dorne, and in return I'm putting up four more glass houses. We've only got the one now, but by the time winter comes, the glass should be here and I'll have them rigged with hypocausts to keep them blooming even when the snows are deep."

 

"We've sent lumber for glass, ourselves." Keavan added, his tone eager. "I know the Lady at Barrowtown unbent enough to do the same, and you know how Lady Dustin is."

 

Robb winced, and then shook his head. Barbrey Dustin, nee Ryswell, had come to his sister's wedding. She'd been a silent, dark shadow in widow's black, and she'd watched the proceedings with a calculation he had misliked.

 

"I wish I knew why she disliked us so."

 

"Well, Lord Robb." Lord Waterman paused and looked at him as they neared the gatehouse up at the keep and Robb raised his eyebrows at the speculative look. Whatever the man saw in his expression, his bannerman apparently liked it because he kept speaking. "I don't speak ill of the dead. It's no honorable habit. That said, your Uncle Brandon was a fine man in every way _but_ how he treated ladies."

 

"What?" Theon asked, totally confused and voicing Robb's own feelings.

 

He'd heard that his Uncle Brandon was wild. Everyone knew he had too much of the Wolf's Blood. He'd even heard a tale or two about him frequenting whorehouses in a way that Ned Stark would have skinned Robb if he'd ever tried. He'd never heard any ill spoken of his uncle's habits, however. If anything Lord Umber and other contemporaries of his Uncle Brandon had sounded admiring.

 

"Lord Brandon didn't confine his attention to whores and women of the smallfolk." Lord Waterman clarified with a frown. "In her youth Lady Barbrey was a _fine_ woman, and her father wanted to see her Lady of Winterfell. Lord Brandon took her maidenhead, but wouldn't offer her marriage when his father had a Southron lady with a rich dowry on offer, and the Ryswells have never forgiven your family. Not that I blame them. If it had been my sister, I'd have ridden into Winterfell like the Wild Wolf rode into the Red Keep… Probably would have only turned out slightly better, too."

 

Robb felt his face heat up and cursed his complexion. His freckles probably looked like they were connecting at this point. Shooting a look at Theon, he saw his friend's blue-green eyes turn away, unable to hold his gaze. Knowing that meant Theon had heard the rumors, Robb silently cursed. Looking at Keavan, he saw that the future Lord Forrester was doing the same.

 

"That wasn't right." Robb let out a deep breath. "I'm sorry my uncle did that to Lady Dustin. She and the Ryswells deserved better treatment for their loyalty, and the honor of their daughters."

 

"I've always thought so, Lord Robb." The old man allowed quietly, obviously pleased by the answer. "As I've no daughters or granddaughters to threaten you with, myself, I don't suppose it would do you any harm to tell me if you plan to seek a fat dowry to the south or a bannerman's daughter?"

 

"My sister's followed the Gods' will to a good alliance in the south, and we've prospered from it." It could very well do him harm and Robb knew it, but he found the answer coming from his lips anyway. "My wife will need to be a lady who can help my people through the rigors of Winter, and I don't think I'll find that South of the Neck."

 

Satisfaction rolled off of the man in waves and Robb realized that, other than the upcoming bear hunt, politics was likely to be his main goal even when it was as bluntly spoken as the last exchange had been between himself and his father's white-haired bannerman. He changed the subject, however, to the continued proof that no weirwoods had been disturbed. The old man was eager to discuss that, as the in depth search of his woods had produced a large stand of weirwood saplings where no-one would have looked for them. Taking it to be a sign from the Gods, he'd moved two very carefully to his Godswood, and had another two prepped for a journey south.

 

By the time that they'd finished discussing how to get one sapling to the Crowlands and another to the southern end of the Reach, they were comfortably settled in Lord Waterman's cozy solar. It had a bank of windows that overlooked the lake. It also had a collection of very comfortable chairs, a huge fireplace that smelled sweetly of burning peat, and a good bottle of wine that Robb was happy to accept a glass of. With Lord Keavan pleading a need to answer a raven from his own father and Theon wishing to go back down to the docks before nightfall, Robb settled in alone with the man to convey the information he most wanted to speak of.

 

"My father's written." Robb laced his fingers together around the thick stoneware cup of wine the older man had handled him. "You and all the other Bannermen should be getting letters soon as well, officially and under Father's seal. Since I'm here, however, I wanted to pass on the information immediately."

 

"Indeed?"

 

"Yes. Lord Stark stopped at the Twins and weather forced him to accept Lord Frey's hospitality."

 

"I have _great_ sympathy for Lord Stark, then."

 

"It might be that a higher power wanted him there." Robb replied to the sarcasm with seriousness. "While there, Father and his men discovered a stand of saplings being grown. They were a tree from the Westerlands used to produce red dye. While they're young, the trees have white bark and orange-red leaves."

  


Lord Waterman's reaction was everything Robb could have hoped for. He sat up, he sloshed wine out of his own cup and onto his blue and brown doublet. His long white beard bristled like a frightened barn cat's tail.

 

"The _Freys_ were behind the false weirwoods?"

 

"Aye, they were selling them in the Stormlands and Reach for huge sums."

 

Robb scowled at the thought. Greywind, who'd curled up at his feet, let out a low growl. Robb reached down to pet the direwolf's head as his pet sat up and placed his long muzzle on Robb's knee, looking for contact to soothe both their tempers.

 

"Those honorless bastards!" Waterman was furious. " _Weasels_ , every one of them, and cowards besides. Lord Tully knew _nothing_ of this?"

 

"My grandfather has been in and out of bed with a long illness." Robb shook his head. "He's turned most of the day-to-day running of his realm over to my uncle, Lord Edmure Tully. Of the last year my uncle's been much occupied dealing with a number of brigands. One band in particular seems to creep out of the Westerlands hills and wreak havoc just after a harvest comes in and the smallfolk have some ready coin on hand."

 

"Aye," Waterman's old, lined face grew pensive. "I'd heard that brigandage had become a real problem for the Southrons."

 

"The Plague killed so many, and a lot of smallfolk fled their homes and are now displaced." Robb rubbed a hand over his face. "Not to mention all the orphans who never were apprenticed or learned a trade because of it. Father sent a letter on that Lord Randyl Tarly of Horn Hill in the Reach wrote him. He and Ser Garlan Tyrell have been in the saddle more than out of it for the last year dealing with similar problems. Even my goodbrother, Prince Oberyn, had to deal with a major band of brigands that had come into Dorne from the Stormlands, in the moons between the Plague fading away and being Marked."

 

"We all owe Howland Reed and your father a drink, then, because if they're not coming north, it's Reed's damned invisible archers and fear of Ice coming down on their necks that's keeping the brigands south."

 

"Aye." Robb grinned suddenly, fierce and sharp and Greywind rumbled happily. "Speaking of _justice_ , Lord Stark served it well."

 

He proceeded to explain everything that his father's letter had passed on to him. He told of how the weirwood plot was discovered. He passed on the fact that it was Lady Gwyn who recognized the trees, because he felt that was only fair and he wanted to give a friend her due. Robb then told of how the peasantry had been angry at being cheated, then satisfied that Lyarra's husband had discovered it and how Lyarra had been the one who spoke directly to the people of it. Smallfolk or not, they were also owed a right to justice.

 

"Six Freys dead and six more for the Watch." Waterman sat back and nodded. "Trust Lord Ned to see it set right. He’s not the most political man, but there’s no-one with better honor. What do you think about this Lord Stevron Frey keeping his father's seat, though?"

 

"It's not perfect." Robb acknowledged. "But I think I agree with Prince Oberyn. I don't want to expense or the annoyance of trying to resettle all of the women and children for a southron House that large. Far better, I think, to scare House Frey straight for a generation or two and weed the bad apples out. We can always have more men to man the Wall later, if needs be."

 

"Truer words, Lord Robb." The old man grinned broadly, suddenly looking years younger as his dark brown eyes laughed gleefully and he shook his head. "Oh, but nothing's as sweet as your father's news. _A set toll_. Since we have no western port that matters we've had to deal with all trade from the southern banks of the rivers and the entire Westerlands coming to us through the Twins. They choked us like wringing a fat hen's neck with those tolls, and now it doesn't matter what the weasels want. They're bound by oath and one of those parchment southron contracts to charge nothing but a set fee per wagon or by the beast of burden for all goods coming North."

 

"That they are." Robb agreed with equal satisfaction, then took a pull of his wine and made a face. "I'd have been happier had they not drawn steel on father while he was their guest once they realized they'd been discovered."

 

_"What?"_

 

Robb sat back while the old bannerman got the necessary cursing out of his system. Robb had received his father's raven at the last keep he'd stopped at. His mother had forwarded it from Winterfell. His own response had been foul to the point where Keavan Forrester had pretended to take notes and Theon had loudly bragged about having taught Robb every single one of the words he was using. Once Robb had finished kicking rocks and Greywind had stopped snapping at thin air, he'd been calm enough to pass on the rest to his friends.

 

" _Those_ \- I don't have words foul enough for the lot of them. The Black is too good for them." Lord Waterman fumed. "Lord Stark's well, though?"

 

"Father's fine. He took a scratch to the arm my sister insisted on fussing over, but Lyarra sent a letter as well and she says no-one was severely harmed other than the Freys." Robb couldn't help adding. "I'm wroth with the Red Viper, though. It pleased me that he made Lyarra happy by getting her that sword, but he put her in a situation where she had to _use_ it!"

 

"Better a lady who can than one who's helpless in the face of those who'd take it from her."

 

"True." Robb rubbed a hand over his face.

 

"Still, if they'd attack a lady, they they deserve her steel and her husband's temper." Waterman proclaimed. "I hope the Viper poisons the lot."

 

Robb raised his cup and toasted the possibility. The rest of the evening was spent discussing the reparations House Frey would have to pay, the likely effect the set toll would have on trade to the North, and the rumor that Greatjon Umber's eldest daughter had dragged her intended husband into Last Hearth's Great Hall by the hair and demanded her father wed them immediately before she broke the man's neck for dawdling. Still, Robb hoped that Arya got his letter soon and answered it. Though Lyarra had claimed she was alright, he wouldn't feel right about it until he got all of his questions answered in detail by another source.

 

* * *

 

"You are incredibly talented, Your Grace."

 

Lyarra jumped slightly at the comment and then felt herself flush as she looked up to find the Blackfish standing behind her, peering over her shoulder. The man was hardly effusively warm, but his smile was polite and his praise genuine. Looking around her and realizing that Lord Tully must have evicted his brother from the blanket the Lord of Riverrun was now sprawled on, Lyarra did what was only polite.

 

"Thank you, Ser Brynden, would you care to join me?"

 

Thick blankets had been spread out across the fresh green grass on a portion of the bank of the Red Fork. At this point the river was a muddy, brick red tongue nearly a league wide as it licked across the landscape of the Riverlands. Its banks were high and curved here, made of deep red clay brought down from the hills of the Westerlands. Sycamore trees with green-gold leaves swayed overhead in a breeze that softened the warmth of the day.

 

The purpose of the outing was supposed to be family oriented. Lord Hoster wanted to spend the day with his son and his grandchildren out in the fine summer weather. His illness had lapsed a little, allowing him to leave the castle in the wheelhouse, and he'd taken the opportunity and gripped it with both hands.

 

"Considering I was banished from the whole damned Riverlands last time, I suppose I _should_ be happy the stubborn goat just kicked me off the blanket."

 

The famed knight snorted his irritation at the idea. Brushing some of his iron gray hair out of his face, he settled down onto the blanket. Lyarra just smiled. She had no idea what to say to that.

Edmure Tully was currently out on the river in a small boat. Somehow he'd convinced her father to join him. Lyarra knew for a fact that Ned Stark had limited fondness for boats, especially small, wobbly ones. Currently father's sword, his boiled leathers, his knives, and his boots were neatly piled up on the blanket he'd been sharing with Arya and Bran. Edmure Tully's various accoutrements were similarly stacked beside Hoster Tully on the Lord's blanket.

 

Like everyone else in the small boat, Eddard Stark was clad only in a light shirt and his trousers. Unlike the Heir to the Riverlands and his niece and nephew, Ned Stark did not look comfortable with this. As Lyarra watched, her father sat down heavily on the small boat's single seat and firmly clamped am arm around Arya's waist as she tottered close to the edge. They were too far out for Lyarra to make out what she was saying, but she was fairly sure her sister had seen a fish. Arya might have also intended to try and catch it with her bare hands.

 

"May I see your drawings, Princess?"

 

"Of course, Ser Brynden."

 

Lyarra could hardly refuse without being rude, though she felt a little odd showing a stranger - and Lady Stark's uncle no less - her work. Still, though it was only a sketchbook, she wasn't ashamed. Lyarra never put anything to parchment she couldn't be proud of. For too much of her life she hadn't had enough of it for that. Parchment was for writing.

 

Or, Lyarra allowed with a well of sudden affection, it had been. Their second morning at Riverrun her husband, who'd been up all night drinking with Edmure Tully and Lyarra's rather reluctant father, awoke her by dropping a small, freshly bound book into her lap. It's cover was a deep blue, and worked into the leather was the pattern of a weirwood made of silver foil.

 

Inside, the neatly trimmed parchment of its pages was blank. Lyarra had asked her husband why he'd given her the journal, delighted with the gift, but curious. She'd barely understood his response. Oberyn had burrowed into the covers like the sidewinding adders he'd told her about living in the red sands of his homeland. Eventually she'd made out that he was ordering her to draw in the book, and that when it was complete, it could join his poetry on the shelves in his quarters at Sunspear.

 

 _"Mayhaps at that point my Uncle, Lord Gargalen, might even be tempted to offer a compliment towards the contents of those shelves."_ Her husband had japed. Then the prince had fallen asleep. Lyarra had rolled him onto his side, rather than his stomach, just in case the drink disagreed with him while she was up and about that day, but by midday her husband had revived himself and rejoined the rest of the party. Lord Edmure, younger though he was and heavier, had not appeared until the evening meal.

 

"These are very fine."

 

The famed knight looked through the first few pages of the book. All were carefully filled with drawings that started out in light charcoal before being drawn over in ink. The last drawing she'd begun to carefully tint with a few sticks of pressed pigment from the carved and inlaid box resting on the blanket at her hip. It was that picture that captured his attention. Lyarra could only imagine that it was the fact that it was an image of Arya and Bran asleep piled atop each other from the wheelhouse that had drawn him to it. They were Ser Brynden's kin; she was merely a valuable guest.

 

"My brother has a watercolor of his grandchildren that hangs in his solar, though, when he was taken to bed he had it brought into his chambers as well. Cat sent it to him."

 

Lyarra didn't have to hear a question to know when one was being asked.

 

"I had done it for my own pleasure some few months before I was Marked. Lady Stark saw me showing it to Father and asked for it, so that she could send it to Lord Tully when she heard that he was ill."

 

" _Cat_ asked you for a drawing?"

 

"It took some effort." Lyarra couldn't keep herself from a wry drawl. She watched as the knight's blue eyes narrowed and then he nodded in acknowledgement.

 

"I won't ask you to offer my niece some understanding, but you're about to gain a school of your own bastard daughters to deal with. Mayhaps it will allow both of you a chance to gain perspective."

 

"Lady Stark's perspective is no longer my concern."

 

"True."

 

There was a moment's awkward silence, then the knight continued in a kinder tone.

 

"You seem happy with your husband."

 

"My Prince is a better man than most would have him be."

 

"He's a dangerous man."

 

"Ser Brynden, _you_ are a dangerous man. _Father_ is a dangerous man. As the Late Lord Frey will tell you _, I_ am dangerous." Lyarra replied archly as Ghost, who'd been napping beside her on the blanket, raised her head from beside Lyarra's knee to look up at the man. " _Life_ is dangerous. Only death is free of risk. I'm in no hurry to be safe."

 

"Well-spoken, Princess." The Blackfish allowed, and turned to look over at where his brother had fallen asleep with Bran's direwolf sitting protectively beside the old man and unnerving his guards terribly. "Have you any other talents?"

 

"I enjoy woodcarving." Lyarra said absentmindedly as she realized Nymeria was nowhere to be seen and begin to fret as to what trouble her little sister's lanky pup might cause. "The box beside me is my work, as is your brother's cane. Your niece commissioned that from me."

 

"She _paid_ for it?"

 

"As she constantly reminded me, Lady Stark was _not_ my mother."

 

A moment later, two loud splashes and an alarmed shout heralded the fact that Nymeria was no longer 'lost'.

 

"Well, _that's_ going to cause trouble." The Blackfish observed.

 

Nymeria had jumped into the Red Fork and was paddling towards the boat. Arya, seeing her friend had decided to join them, decided to join her friend. To Edmure Tully's intense credit he gave control of the boat to Lyarra's father and immediately lept in after his niece.

 

"How the hell do you control this thing?" Lyarra's father roared in confusion as he stared at the lines attached to the boat's small sail and then looked back at its rudder.

 

"Ah, _fuck_ , I better swim out now before it sinks." Ser Blackfish muttered, sticking one leg out and beginning to pull off his boots while Lord Tully woke from his nap and began to bellow instructions at his goodson unhelpfully from the shore. "Where's your husband? He claims to have spent time crewing a pirate ship."

 

"He and Ser Daemon and two of the guards took Lady Myria, Lady Gwyn, and Lady Walda for a walk through the forest to gather flowers. He was feeling too restless to sit still and there was no room in the boat."

 

"Ah." The second boot hit the grass and the hoary old warrior began to peel off the light mail he'd worn out even on this day of pleasant family amusements. "Your sister swims like a Tully."

 

Lyarra smiled, sharing the man's pride for once.

 

"Father taught us to swim in the pools in the Godswood, but when her children were older and hardier, Lady Stark took them out to the deeper, wider creeks in the Wolfswood and taught them to swim in fast water."

 

"And yourself?"

 

"Robb taught me."

 

"It's good you're close." That at least was spoken with pure gruff sincerity as the man stood up wearing only his own trousers and showing off a lean, hard body despite his years. "Well, nothing else for it."

 

A moment later, with an almost boyish grin, the Blackfish leapt into the river, his arms held over his head like an arrow tip. He barely disturbed the surface as he vanished in the deep, Tully red waters. His head popped up surprisingly close to where Nymeria had, _gently_ , taken Edmure Tully's arm in her mouth and was towing him around in a circle while Arya laughed and treaded water. Edmure Tully was wisely holding himself very still for this game. Ser Brynden swam past the laughing little whirlpool of uncle, niece, and wolf. He made directly for the small sailboat that was now turning in an awkward little circle.

 

Bran's wolf, apparently content that the grandfather he'd been ordered to guard was awake and aware of his surroundings, had leapt into the river as well. Unable to climb into the boat, Bran's tawny direwolf had just hooked his front feet over the side. Now he was slowly kicking with his back feet, pushing the boat even more off course as Lyarra watched her father try and keep his balance while hoisting a dripping, squirming direwolf pup that weighed as much as Gwyn did over the side of the boat.

 

"Leave the wolf alone and mind the _rudder_ , boy!" Hoster Tully yelled, apparently forgetting that the 'boy' in question was the Warden of the North in his exasperation. "Haven't you ever been on a sailboat before?"

 

"The last time I was on a boat, I was at war and someone _else_ was sailing the damned thing!" Ned Stark yelled back.

 

Ghost rose to her feet, yawning, stretching and looking longingly at the water.

 

"Don't you dare add to the chaos." Lyarra reached out to pat her own partner upon the head as the wolf gave her a silent canine grin to pass on the message that this was exactly what had been on her wolfish mind.

 

"The thought did not even cross my mind." A cheerfully malicious voice from behind her caused Lyarra to jump and she turned to see her husband standing over her with a small basket on his arm filled with a variety of roots, mushrooms, and leaves.

 

"It's wrong to lie, Husband." Lyarra rolled her eyes in response to his claim, and nodded towards the basket. "I shouldn't touch anything in that, should I?"

 

"You're not allowed within two yards of it, actually."

 

His eyes skirted over her belly before he hung it on a low branch of a nearby sassafras tree and then threw himself on the blanket beside her. Lyarra moved her new journal to allow him to rest his head in her lap. As she watched the Blackfish make it to the boat and climb aboard, taking control of the chaos from her grateful father, Lyarra absentmindedly carded her fingers through his hair while he hummed in enjoyment and a low sense of contentment rolled through her, from him.

 

"Where are the ladies?"

 

"Lady Walda happened upon a stand of blackberry canes and Lady Gwyn overruled all in the name of picking some. I left the others to guard her and returned in hopes that my Princess-."

 

Lyarra froze and her husband stiffened before sitting up.

 

"What is it?"

 

"Nothing, I just realized I haven't had one of Gwyn's blackberry tarts since before we wed. I hope she makes some."

 

"I'm sure she shall, if you ask it of her." Oberyn paused and his lips turned up in a wickedly playful grin as his eyes flicked towards her belly again. "Do you _need_ one, darling?"

 

Lyarra could practically taste it and the longing she felt was embarrassingly intense. She narrowed her eyes at her husband and glared. He just chuckled and sat up. The smile he offered her was wry, sweet, and sad. She could feel his grief and longing mixed with pleasure whispering across the space between them.

 

"When Ellaria was pregnant with Lia, she craved persimmons." Oberyn breathed out, his voice low as he shared something private. "I had no idea what they even were. I'd never eaten one, but she _must_ have persimmons. Her mother brought them to Hellholt from Lys, and I knew there were trees there, so I rode out. When I got there, however, I found the trees had died some two years hence and Lord Uller had not thought to write his daughter of it, lest it upset her that her mother's mark upon the home she'd never been able to claim as Lady was fading."

 

"Oh no...."

 

"So, being the dutiful lover and valiant knight that I am, I rode for Starfall. Lord Uller said they also had persimmon trees." Oberyn went on. "I nearly killed my horse, but I was confident I had made it in record time."

 

"A wonderful story." Lyarra felt herself smile. "I'm sure your daughters love it."

 

"They love it best when my brother tells it." Oberyn snorted. "His fool brother, riding all over Dorne looking for persimmons. While I was riding around my brother sent a raven to the Lord of Starfall, asking for him to send jelly and dried fruit by boat to the Water Gardens where Ellaria was spending her pregnancy. My lady had her persimmons, my brother got to gloat, and I had to ride home in a foul temper. On the fairer side, I was never happier to be beset by a group of brigands in need of slaying."

 

Lyarra couldn't help it, she laughed. Her husband's pleasure at having made her merry was reflected in his smugness. She let him claim a kiss as his reward, refusing to be embarrassed since everyone else was too occupied watching the drama in the water to notice if he slipped his tongue into her mouth. When he pulled back she sighed and allowed him to take her journal and page through it.

 

"You've a real gift, my lady, but I wonder if your education in incomplete." Oberyn drawled playfully. "How can you consider yourself a proper artist if you've never studied the human form?"

 

"I've studied the human form."

 

"Ah, but have you studied it _without_ clothing?" Oberyn grinned and Lyarra rolled her eyes at him.

 

"Yes, Oberyn, I have done nude studies."

 

He stared at her in shock and she grinned.

 

"Gwyn volunteered, but I did those in charcoal and burned them so that nobody could add to the rumors against her." Lyarra explained. "And Theon Greyjoy has absolutely no shame… though I'll admit that I made him keep his smallcothes on."

 

"I don't know whether I'm delighted or annoyed, Lyarra." His tone was considering before he wickedly grinned. "Did you burn those as well?"

 

"No, they're under the false bottom in my chest of carving tools."

 

"I'll trade you a look at your previous work for a modeling session without smallclothes, darling." Oberyn offered and Lyarra smiled back as Ghost got up and wandered over to the river's edge unnoticed.

 

"Agreed, but I get to mention that you were looking at those sketches to Theon in my next raven to Robb."

 

"But of course. Please add my continued speculations as to the nature of their deep friendship."

Lyarra, who'd already seen Robb's _horror_ at realizing that most of the Dornish party had decided Theon was his paramour, agreed immediately.

 

"It will serve as a good distraction from his fretting over my fighting at the Twins." Lyarra huffed and rolled her eyes. "As if I could _avoid_ it. I did not choose for anyone to draw steel on me."

 

"No, but you handled it well." Her husband's pride was a balm on her soul and Lyarra reached out to brush his hair behind his ear and then try and straighten his hopelessly disarranged coat and the tunic beneath it before she realized something was amiss.

 

"Ghost, don't you-!" Lyarra managed to start, but it was too late.

 

The white direwolf had crept down a low spot in the bank and climbed into the river. Not finding it to her liking as Nymeria had, Ghost had returned to the edge of the blanket. Now, as Lyarra and Oberyn put their arms up and yelled in protest, the shaggy beast shook energetically, spraying them both in muddy water.

 

* * *

 

Lord Randyll Tarly looked over his two living daughters with reluctant relief and a sharp tinge of regret. The girls hadn't yet had their moons blood and they were no beauties, but their mother had been no beauty herself and he was not a useless, handsome fool. Both girls had straight brown hair drawn back into neat braids. Their dresses were proper and modest for their ages, and they were quiet and obedient as girls ought to be.

 

Simply put, they _lived_. That alone made his daughters more marriageable than many. Traditional as it was in almost all Houses, and encouraged by the Faith, many unmarried maidens made a point of distributing alms to the poor. As such they'd been some of the first to catch the Plague when it came through.

 

Randyll himself had lost his wife and eldest daughter to the Plague in such a manner. They now lay in the crypts beneath Horn Hill, serving as their own funeral effigies. The Grey Plague knew no kindness.

 

"Go with your nurse and mind that your manners make me proud." Randyll said firmly, but summoned up a small smile for the children; they'd never been far from Horn Hill before, and he'd brought them to the Red Keep itself. "If you're good, I will allow your nurse to take you to play in the gardens later."

 

Both of the girls lit up at that and Randyll resisted the urge to be angry at them for it. They were too young and too foolish to know what to value in a man or in life. All the better that the Gods decided that _fathers_ chose husbands, not the daughters themselves.

 

Thoughts on the Gods and the Faith sent a roiling, sickening bitterness through Randyll's gut, however, and he reached to touch the pocket at his hip almost without thought. The letters inside it crinkled and he breathed out in relief. He'd feared that, again, a whole new set of Gods mocked him, but the raven that Sam had sent on from Horn Hill had arrived last night with a letter from the North and it had set his mind at ease.

 

 _Samwell_.

 

His only living son.

 

"Lord Tarly, is there a particular reason that you've decided to lay siege to that wall, or is it just offensive in some general way?"

 

Lord Renly Baratheon's voice was pleasant in the extreme, but it grated on his nerves. Still, he knew his duty and he knew what common courtesy demanded. Randyll stepped back and bowed at the taller, younger man. He also looked past him at the lithe, fit young Tyrell knight beside him and inclined his head at Ser Loras Tyrell.

 

"Lord Renly, Ser Loras, it is good to see you in King's Landing." Randyll offered, stepping to the side so the other men could pass. "Congratulations on your appointment to the Small Council."

 

"Thank you, Lord Tarly." Renly Baratheon, frivolas, foolish boy that Randyll had known him as, actually managed to frown and look serious in response. "Were it not for my responsibility to my brother, I would have turned it down. The Plague was hard on the Stormlands. I feel it opened my eyes to my responsibilities there."

 

That had been a minor _miracle_ , but Randyll couldn't deny it had happened. The man's smallfolk were some of the few who actively liked the man. He'd handled the Plague itself poorly, flailing in an attempt to find a way to halt its spread and largely making it worse until Dorne arrived with the goats necessary to stop the disease. Once they'd arrived, however, Renly Baratheon had taken decisive action, and he was one of the few to raise those without titles to become lords or knights where older Houses and keeps had been wiped out by the plague. As Randyll understood it, everyone else had chosen to elevate the lesser sons and cousins of Houses that supported them, or their own kin.

 

Apparently unsettled by the silence that had fallen, Ser Loras went on.

 

"I understand you brought your daughters to the capitol hoping to arrange betrothals."

 

"I did. I was surprised to hear that your father and grandfather were coming for the tourney, Ser Loras, but that your sister, Lady Margaery, was not."

 

"Margaery is still recovering from the shock of Lady Myriam's death." Loras answered smoothly.

 

Randyll nodded in reluctant understanding. Myriam Flowers was a bastard, but she'd been a pious and gentle lady since she'd been sent to foster at Highgarden when he was a lad. Marked as soulmate to a minor noble, only to have him die prematurely, she'd remained a part of the household at Highgarden since. A moon before Randyll had left Horn Hill for the Red Keep, the old woman had a fit of some kind while atop Highgarden's walls. She'd tumbled forward into a courtyard all but at the feet of several members of the Tyrell family who'd known her all of their lives.

 

"Ladies are delicate." Randyll acknowledged. "One must make allowances."

 

"Fourteen hours in the birthing bed shoving something the size of a melon out of our nether regions and we're _delicate_ ?" A familiar peevish voice broke the peace of the hallway. "If she was alive, Lord Tarly, I think this is where I demand an apology from your mother for not finding a nurse capable of handling a babe without dropping it on its head. Delicate, _pah_! Delicate is sobbing because you've pissed out a stone a quarter the size of a pea!"

 

"Good morning, Grandmother!" Ser Loras smiled sunnily while the Stormlord looked ready to bolt.

 

Randyll Tarly felt his lips turn up slightly as he turned to bow. It was the only appropriate response. The Queen of Thorns had arrived.

 

"Lady Olenna, I didn't know you were in the capitol!" Lord Renly stepped forward like a man trying to face his execution with dignity and kissed one wizened old hand. "What a _delightful_ surprise."

 

"Stop looking to your left when you lie, boy." Was the only response he got before the tiny, wrinkled old lady turned to look at Randyll with a speculative frown. "It'll do you no good while sitting on the Small Council to be either honest _or_ transparent."

 

Renly grimaced but allowed the truth with a nod. He excused himself to go about his duties. Ser Loras stayed for a moment longer, chatting with his grandmother, and then left after a look. At least he had a valid excuse, Randyll reflected. He would not have left the little Lady Shireen Baratheon alone with Queen Cersei either.

 

Through all of his grief Randyll could spare a hint of gladness for the girl. He'd seen her face before, when her father lived. Stannis Baratheon had been required to bring her to court by his brother, the King, and Randyll had been doing his duty in coming with Mace Tyrell for something pointless and posturing.

 

When he'd seen Stannis Baratheon's only child, he'd been sure the Gods would have been kinder to kill her. The shy thing had a face with one side made of flaking, gray-green stone and ugly, twisted, rocky scarring. It was not the face of a lady who'd ever wed, and the Queen had been quick to mock the child and forbid her from the presence of the royal children even though she was long past the point of passing Grayscale on to another.

 

As it was, having survived Grayscale, the girl was immune to any further outbreak of the disease. Still, when Lord Willas Tyrell's friendship with Prince Oberyn, licentious ass that he was, had gotten goats to House Tyrell first, Ser Loras had seen to both himself and his soulmate and the girl getting them. He knew not what the justification was for bothering to inoculate the child, but it had a side effect. First the stony skin on her face and neck had peeled away, leaving red, bleeding sores. Then, to everyone's surprise, it had closed. While Shireen Baratheon would never be a true beauty given her large ears and weak chin, her black hair was lustrous, her eyes were blue, and unlike two of the Queen's children she livedand she was now unscarred.

 

"Lend me your arm, Lord Randyll, it's a long walk to the library."

 

"Of course, Lady Olenna."

 

It was a quiet enough walk, and a comfortable one. Randyll didn't like the Queen of Thorns any more than most wise men would. He was not, however, intimidated by her. The woman was intelligent, and it was thankful that she was or the Reach would have suffered far worse than it had under Lord Mace Tyrell. As it was, Lady Olenna's intelligence and that of her grandson, Willas, saved them much grief. If Lady Olenna had something to say to him, and she must if she 'happened' upon him in the hallway and then all but chased her own grandson away, he wished to hear it.

 

Eventually they were in a small library. Randyll had no love for studiousness, and less now that he'd watched his only living son lose himself in it so willingly and at the expense of his honor and usefulness. As such, given his own meager time at the Red Keep, he'd had no idea that it held more than one library, let alone this small, well-stocked one. It was surprisingly dusty, as if the servants either felt they could get away with cleaning it, or somehow didn't dare to.

 

"Prince Rhaegar used to favor this room, I hear." Lady Olenna said, as if answering a question Randyll hadn't asked aloud. "As it's still intact I imagine the servants haven't passed on that bit of information. If I'm not in danger of wheezing what's left of my life away, Lord Randyll, I think you'll survive. At least they've kept the mice and rats away."

 

"True enough." Randyll allowed and dusted off a seat roughly with his hands for the lady before doing the same himself.

 

He took a moment to glance around the room, which was small and oddly shaped, as if it were shoved in as an afterthought in the design of this part of the castle. Odd-sized and mismatched bookshelves filled the room, but the tomes had overflowed them. The catty cornered and unevenly placed shelves were in some places totally obstructed by towers of books, and here and there nooks were packed tightly with scrolls.

 

"You received a raven this morning carrying a scroll with a direwolf stamped in gray wax." Lady Olenna didn't play coy when talking with him. Instead she curled her hands over the head of her finely carved redwood cane and tapped her fingernails against it once while raising her eyebrows beneath her blue wimple. "Last I heard the Warden of the North was headed south amidst rumors that old Hoster Tully was adding religious fraud to half-killing his daughter on his list of personal crimes and current court gossip."

 

"Lord Tully's been saved further embarrassment, and Ned Stark's honor is intact." Randyll replied, leaning back in his own chair and appreciating that it was comfortably sized for a lean man of a certain height. As he aged his knees were bothering him more, and exercising to keep them limber was making it worse. "Lord Walder Frey and the endless fruit of his loins were behind it. They'd been growing Westerland Dyers' Trees and selling them when they were still white saplings. That's what our people have been paying for; at least the ones who tried to rush by paying rather than waiting for a sapling from Stark himself."

 

"So everyone but you and, say, four other lords." The old woman let out a creaky laugh and sat back. "I'll owe Willas an apology when I return to Highgarden. I had urged him to spend the coin the placate the smallfolk with more weirwood trees for their freshly planted godswoods."

 

"Lord Willas was right to be cautious, as was I." Randyll agreed, pleased that his exchange of letters on the subject with the Tyrell Heir had shown them of like minds and that time had proved them right. "Your nephew is also the one that the reparations will come to in order to pay back those defrauded by Aenys Frey and the others involved."

 

"I take it they all lost their heads to First Man justice."

 

"Six did, six took the black." Randyll mused. "I can't say I disapprove of it. Attending court myself and passing judgement with Heartsbane in my hand has helped with the unrest after the Plague at Horn Hill."

 

"Your people have always approved your piety, Lord Tarly." Lady Olenna replied. "No matter which gods you're pious in regards to."

 

"I'd follow the Seven to this day, and to my death, had the Faith not betrayed me." Randyll's tone was hotter than he intended with fresh grief and anger.

 

Lady Olenna's harsh, cunning old face actually softened somewhat, though her eyes were angry as she nodded at him.

 

"That I understand." She allowed, but her nature had her adding. "Willas _did_ warn you."

 

"Lord Willas did. I did not listen, and will regret it to my dying day."

 

When word of the inoculation first began Randyll had done as all of the faithful had. He'd gone to the Septons and he'd prayed in his Sept until his knees were bloody at their command. The Plague, the Faith said, was a judgement against their lack of piety and their sinful ways. No false claim of mercy from savage gods living in trees could save them. Accepting a diseased goat's blood as a cure? It was no better than witchcraft or bestiality they said, and would offer no hope.

 

"Smuggling his youngest sisters and himself out of Horn Hill and to Highgarden to get inoculated will likely be the _only_ brave thing my son ever does." Randyll admitted bitterly in memory.

 

Samwell, craven that he was, had dared argue with Randyll when he'd refused to have any of his children or his family inoculated. Samwell had even continued to argue after Randyll had shown his displeasure with his fists. Not that it had done any good. He'd refused to allow the goats onto his land at all, though he'd quickly seen that for the folly it was. Soon his fields were deserted and his crops rotting as most the smallfolk fled.

 

While Randyll was trying to deal with that mass sign of sign of potential unrest against his rule, his fat, coward of an eldest son had vanished. He'd stayed gone for long weeks with his youngest sisters, but by that time Randyll's attention was elsewhere. His eldest daughter and his wife were dying; slowly turning from flesh to stone in screaming agony. Worse, _Dickon_ had been struck by the disease.

 

It ached like a wound he knew would never heal. His brave, warrior son lying in bed with his flesh hardening and turning gray. First like leather, then flaking like granite peeling under dragonfire, his hard, _strong_ son was reduced to frightened tears while his body turned against him. Now Dickon lay with his mother, his sister, and his ancestors beneath Horn Hill.

 

Samwell had eventually returned with his younger sisters. They all bore the sun and spear of House Martell upon their shoulders. As if they weren't Marcher lords who'd fought the Dornish for time out of mind. Randyll had been angry enough at that point to kill, but he'd also been exhausted. His wife was dead, and Sam was his _only_ son.

 

Worse yet, Samwell was _right_. By that point it was clear that the inoculation worked. The Old Gods of the Forest had sent a miracle to save Westeros while the clergy of the Faith sat fat and pampered in their Septs living rich off of the tithes of the peasants and lords. All of his faith, all of is piety, was for nothing. It was a lie and it had cost Randyll Tarly that which he held most dear.

 

"Well, better one that than nothing." Olenna allowed and Randyll nodded, pushing the bitterness away with some small speck of hope as he patted Lord Stark's letter again without realizing it.

 

"I've been corresponding with the Warden of the North about how the Old Gods expect their faithful to serve them." He went on. "At first I thought he was mocking me, for it's so _simple_ , but I've come to realize he's not. Apparently the Old Gods really don't expect anything but prayers and good and just behavior from their followers. Don't kill anyone, don't cheat anyone, don't rape anyone, and keep your word and honor guest right and the Old Gods will not strike against you. Their favor's a fickler thing, though, and Lord Stark claims not to understand it."

 

"I doubt that Ned Stark is gifted with enough creativity to mock anyone, let alone grapple with fickle gods." Olenna Tyrell snorted. "I've _met_ the man. He was so boring he could replace dreamwine as a sleep aid. He's likely the only lord in history to take pleasure from his duties the way that King Robert enjoys his whores."

 

"Mayhaps that's why the Gods bless him so."

 

"Mayhaps." Olenna nodded slowly and turned to look at him with dark, intelligent eyes. "They've certainly been free with their blessings. A _bastard_ _daughter_ Marked and raised to a Princess of Dorne. Not everyday that the Gods do that."

 

"No, it's not." He agreed and sat back. "I've also heard that the Dornish were unusually generous with the bride price, though it seems to have been almost entirely worked out in foodstuffs."

 

"The North would value that more than gold, with winter coming."

 

"A wise choice."

 

"I'm more interested in the dowry." The Queen of Thorns drawled. "From what I hear enough seasoned lumber is heading south to Dorne to build them a very tidy little fleet."

 

"That I had not heard." Randyll's already straight spine snapped further upright. "Are you sure?"

 

" _Entirely_. Willas has it from the Viper himself."

 

"House Martell is in a strong position." Randyll said slowly as his mind went back to the letters he'd had from the ;ord, advising him on how to direct his smallfolk as their faith shifted and Randyll's own moved to gods that did not sacrifice his beloved child on an alter to their own corruption. "And Lord Stark accepted my congratulations on the marriage, but with reluctance. He was not happy to give his daughter up."

 

"To the _Red_ _Viper_?" Lady Olenna smirked. "Can you blame the man?"

 

Randyll was prepared to scoff at that, for though the man was a fearsome and admirable warrior, he was also father to far too many ill-gotten bastards and defiled himself regularly with other men according to rumor. Unfortunately he didn't get the chance. A surprisingly rich voice commented from within the tangle of shelves, breaking the brief quiet and causing Randyll to jump and Lady Olenna to press a hand to her chest in surprise.

 

"Well, mayhaps the Gods looked down on how few trueborn daughters are left to the noble Houses of Westeros and decided it was best to Mark Prince Oberyn now before he could seduce and deflower half of them himself?"

 

Randyll rose to see who'd spoken and felt his face twist in annoyance and disgust as he watched a short figure rise from between two shelves pushed close together. Seated on the floor, he'd been invisible between two high towers of books. Tyrion Lannister, the Imp of Casterly Rock, set aside the thick tome he'd been reading and rose and bowed.

 

"Lady Olenna, I hadn't realized anyone beyond the servants knew of my bolthole here. What a _pleasure_ it is to share it with two such astute and well-informed individuals."

 

"Lord Tyrion, you continue with the trend of your birth and remain an interesting surprise." Lady Olenna rejoined and got a thin smile for the sharp prick of her thorns from the Imp.

 

"I've had so much success at it, my lady, I could hardly stop now, could I?"

 

"It is customary to announce one's presence when entering a room." Randyll said stiffly and Lord Tyrion's strange, mismatched eyes fixed on him; the green curious and the black cutting.

 

"Indeed, but I forgive you for the oversight, Lord Randyll."

 

Randyll ground his teeth.

 

"In truth, I was so caught up in my book I didn't notice you until you began to speak." He went on pleasantly. "Then I was hesitant to interrupt. I wouldn't want to be _rude_ , after all."

 

"Whyever not?" Olenna snorted and rose to her feet with the assistance of her cane. "I find that a certain amount of rudeness actually gets things done. Politeness seldom accomplishes anything but creating itself. It's like manners are rabbits."

 

"And yet manners never have quite as much _fun_ as rabbits seem to."

 

"I'll accept you as an expert on the topic." Olenna rejoined. "Tell me, has the quality of entertainment in the capital gone down with Lord Baelish's death? I understand the whores have lost a great deal of their organization."

 

"Some of the finer establishments have closed, but I find I do not have the time for those diversions that I once did."

 

"I had heard that Lord Arryn wanted you for Master of Coin on the Small Council." Randyll interjected, wanting the conversation to be over, or at least move to ground he could retreat from.

 

Little as he liked retreat it was the only reasonable response to being caught in a battle of wits and words between the Queen of Thorns and the Imp of Casterly Rock.

 

"He attempted to, but Lord Robert was little moved by the idea of appointing a man master of anything when he cannot reach a high shelf without a stool." Tyrion's smile turned crooked and bitter. "Then there was my dear sister's opinion on the matter."

 

"The Queen's opinion on many things is heard these days." Olenna replied lightly and Lord Tyrion smirked.

 

"Being heard and being _listened_ to are two separate things. I have been appointed as the King's Counter."

 

"A position I am sure you'll do well at." Lady Olenna's reply was directly ambiguous in a way that made Randyll's head hurt. "I find I've grown weary, however, so I'll leave you to your books, Lord Tyrion."

 

Randyll said his own farewells and offered the old dragon his arm. She took it and they made their way back out of the small room quietly. Once in the hallway Lady Olenna had one more thing left to say.

 

"You said that Lord Stark seemed reluctant to give his bastard up." She offered. "Why?"

 

"I believe he loves the child." Randyll answered easily.

 

His heart still ached for his true son, and he found he couldn't fault the man for that. At one point the man had digressed in one of his letters, bragging about several of his children. Young Lord Robb seemed a fine lad, responsible and skilled with a sword, and Randyll had forced himself to swallow his jealousy at that and the knowledge that even Bran Stark would soon be a squire to the Blackfish and gain House Stark acclaim that way.

 

"He claims the girl is an artist who works well in watercolors and ink, and carves wood in the way of the North." He went on. "He says she sews, is a quiet girl, and is dedicated and responsible. He'd hoped to wed her to one of his own bannermen and keep her close."

 

"Well, the Gods had other ideas." Lady Olenna turned dark, cutting eyes on him. "One wonders why?"

 

"It's not for _me_ to wonder at the Gods, Lady Olenna." Randyll shrugged, though he felt a hint of disquiet.

 

The gods he'd served his whole life had mistreated him. He'd lost a good wife he respected. He'd lost his eldest daughter, who was a gentle, pious girl. He'd lost the son who held all his hopes for the future.

 

Yet… the Red Viper couldn't be believed to favor or care for the ideals of any God. If that was the case, then did that not mean that the Old Gods of House Stark had guided the Marks that brought the unlikely couple together? If that was the case perhaps Randyll had best pay attention. He'd run afoul of disbelieving the Old Gods of the Forest once, and he would not chance to do so again.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra wasn't even slightly surprised that her husband ordered a tray to their guest quarters. She imagined that Lord Tully was too taxed after a day out to eat in the Great Hall, and if their host opted not to they could get away with it as well. Lyarra was rather desperate for the privacy. Had she been able to opt for complete privacy it would have been even better. She was in no hurry to break bread with her husband.

 

The pleasant day they'd spent out had come to a rather awful conclusion. Oh, it had started out innocently enough. Lord Hoster Tully was gracious and pleasant as he sat tiredly propped up on cushions in the wheelhouse on the way back. Presiding over a group of ladies of rank was odd to the man, but it appealed to him to be the center of attention. Arya was also present, and Lyarra sometimes had trouble reconciling the man's various traits and hypocrisies.

 

This was a man who would have happily murdered her, if not as a babe, then certainly while her mother carried her. He'd done the same to another bastard, and one that his daughter Lysa had desired to carry and birth. He was too proud to allow any stain on his family's honor or his pride, and yet in trying to hide one he'd shamed the Tully name severely.

 

At the same time the man obviously _adored_ his family. He had spent the afternoon either approving of his son and leveling warm guidance to the young lord or fussing at him endlessly about his unmarried state. He traded friendly barbs readily with the brother he was now reconciled with. Hoster Tully doted on his grandchildren with endless affection and praise, even overlooking Arya's wildness with only a few gentle admonitions to be more ladylike. Even when pressed on the matter he'd said was, _'it's a father's job to curb his daughters' wildness and a grandfather's job to enjoy it.'_

 

Yet, at the same time he doted on Arya and Bran, he attempted to dig his fingers into their futures with no thought to what they might want. Arya, he gave some consideration in the form of knowing her personality meant she'd be happier in a place where women were more free. But beyond encouraging her father to find Arya a husband in Dorne, he'd ignored the girl's desire not to be betrothed. Lord Hoster floated names and broke down men as candidates not based on their qualities as men, but on the raw wealth, power, and prestige of their Houses.

 

The same was done with Bran. Lyarra's father's tentative plan to allow Bran to get to know Meera Reed brought Hoster Tully's temper out. House Reed was deemed _insufficient_. The lady would have few skills to impress anyone, she would be of a strange family, and her dowry would not rank a Lord Paramount's second son. Lord Stark was cautioned not to make foolish decisions based on sentimentality.

 

Instead Lord Tully warmed to the idea of Shireen Baratheon. The Lady was currently the Heir to the Stormlands and would remain so unless the King fathered a son on Queen Cersei to replace the one he had lost. Recently Lady Shireen had been cured of her infamous scars. Most importantly, even if the Baratheons did produce a male heir through the King _(legitimized bastard, second son, however it came about)_ the lady was being raised by Lord Renly Baratheon. As the current Lord of Storm's End was Marked and bound to a male soulmate, he had the right to appoint any relative he chose as Heir. Shireen Baratheon, who was such a favorite, would likely bring her husband a Lord Paramount's coronet and Ned Stark was the King's dearest friend.

 

Lady Stark's father was a bundle of contradictions. While Lyarra felt no closer to the woman, and considered leaving her household and her control the clearest of the benefits of being ripped from her home, she did think she understood her better. The Blackfish was right that people were crafted by their parents, and Lyarra worried a little that her lack of a mother might somehow harm the child she was now carrying.

 

Or at least she'd been worried about that. Edmure Tully had driven that now mild-seeming worry from her mind with a few words. She knew he'd been trying to lighten the mood and had meant no harm, but she found she couldn't regret the fact that the auburn-haired lord now had to deal with having his two most powerful guests furious at him.

 

"Lyarra, darling-."

 

" _Don't_ talk to me." Lyarra was trying to breathe through her dismay, her face in her hands as she sank down into a chair.

 

She was entirely too upset to walk all the way to the bed. Even if her knees hadn't felt weak and her head dizzy she wouldn't have wanted to. The bed was entirely too relevant to her current thoughts, and none of them were good.

 

"Gods, Obeyrn, you _knew_." Lyarra groaned, furious and mortified as she looked up at him, pulling her hands away from her face and then turning and refusing to look at him after she caught a glimpse of the mix of chagrin and hauteur on his smug, handsome face. "You knew and you said nothing to me. Did you think it was funny?"

 

"Lyarra, there is nothing to be ashamed of." He said lowly and she felt him come over to kneel beside her chair, but she shoved his hands away when she felt him try and rest them on her arms in a prelude to an embrace.

 

" _Nothing-_ ?!" Lyarra stood reflexively from the chair. "Did you _hear_ what he said?"

 

"Yes, and I assure you that I and the floppy fish of that bard's song are going to address his lack of manners as soon as your father is finished with him." Her husband's voice was a cold, threatening hiss, but Lyarra's own temper was up at it and her shame were working hand in hand. "It is his uncouth address that is to be disgusted by, Lyarra, not anything you or I did."

 

 _"The Lady Jynessa isn't wrong."_ Lyarra quoted back at her husband. " _But the Prince is entirely too modest in claiming he has no musical talent. I assure you, on the road where the tent walls are thin, I heard singing merrily, and I assure you the Princess never would have done it without her husband's accompaniment."_

 

"Lyarra-."

 

"Gods." Lyarra breathed, her skin felt clammy and her hands felt cold she was so overwrought at the realization. "Oberyn, I thought - I _didn't_ think. I just _trusted_ you and for the last two fortnights how many people were listening while we made love and laughing at me? And there you stand and you think it is _funny_!"

 

"I do _not_!" He argued just as fiercely, coming around the chair to stand in front of her and reach for her again. "Lyarra, I am sorry you are so upset. I am sorry he spoke that way to you. The idiot had _no_ _right_. I should have his tongue out of his fool head for it!"

 

"Why? It's not like he wasn't speaking the truth." Lyarra huffed out a pained laugh. "I'm the one who- who has been screaming like a _whore_ for you without thought since-."

 

"You are nothing like a whore, and having such experience with them as I have, I think I am qualified to make that judgement." Her husband's tone was sharp with anger and his own emotions were a roiling mass of embarrassment and frustrated fury. "Lyarra, there's _no_ shame in finding joy in passion, in sensuality."

 

"Even when people hear it? When they talk about it behind your back?"

 

"Were you not so _shy_ I would have made no such orders, and you could have laughed it off as I or anyone born in Dorne would." He argued.

 

"So it's _my_ fault."

 

"That is _not_ what I said!"

 

Lyarra opened her mouth to counter that, but found herself too dizzy to do so. The room began to sway. Gray danced at the corners of her vision and she reached out blindly for the chair or the mantle. Whichever she was closest to would do well, but suddenly she was too disoriented to find either.

 

It proved immaterial as suddenly a pair of strong, lean arms wrapped themselves around her. Lyarra rested her hands weakly against her husband's chest, but instead of pushing, ended up tangling them in the open sides of his shirt and coat. The room continued to spin around her and she closed her eyes.

 

"Lyarra?!" The alarm in Oberyn's voice was a living, writhing thing. "Crone's sagging teats! _Dammit_ , you need to lay down. _Rest_."

 

Then he'd swept her up into his arms and as the world tilted with him picking her up, Lyarra lost track of where she was in a snowstorm of swirling gray and black pinpoints. She returned to wakefulness only a moment or two later, however, as she felt hands pulling her skirt up her thighs.

 

"I _can't_ believe-."

 

"I'm _examining_ you, Lyarra. I need to know if there are signs the babe - I need to know our child's well."

 

Lyarra's dizzy fury at the thought he was trying to initiate something with her evaporated. Fear sliced through embarrassment and left it in tattered ribbons. Lyarra laid still as he drew her skirt up carefully and slid her smallclothes off. Her husband's hands were gentle, and for once touched her with no effort to arouse or instigate.

 

"Tell me immediately it there's any pain." His voice was soft and quiet with concern.

 

To Lyarra's relief there was none. Nor was there any bleeding. He gently pressed her belly in places, and the examination ended up being as intimate as some of their lovemaking, but when it was done his tight, fearful expression eased and the soft lines around his mouth and eyes returned to normal. Barely visible again, they were not deeply graven as Lyarra had seen when she'd first woken from her swoon.

 

"You're fine, as is our daughter." He pronounced, walking over to a basin to clean his hands and then surprising her by coming over to the bed and pulling off his shirt and coat. "You're overwrought and tired. You need to _rest_ Lyarra. You're young, this is your first babe, and you're overtired."

 

"Alright." She agreed, her anger having been burned away by the fear, only leaving a sense of humiliation and helpless sadness that so little had changed.

 

"Did you eat anything of substance today?"

 

She'd spent weeks feeling safe. She'd finally felt free of the shame that had constantly dogged her as a bastard. Lyarra realized now that she was foolish to ever feel that way. Mockery was always around the corner, and she was its favorite target.

 

"No." Lyarra hadn't thought about it, but she curled a hand over the bare skin of her belly and reached down to pull the covers over herself and acknowledged he was right. "I felt unwell this morning, and then at lunch nothing smelt right."

 

" _Dammit_. May I join you? I do not believe Ghost would welcome me right now, and the kennels aren't really fit for a prince."

 

Lyarra nodded silently, but curled onto her side away from him as he slid into bed. Undeterred, the stubborn man curled around her like spoons nesting in a drawer. He rested his nose in her curls and draped the braid she'd wound her hair into today over her shoulder and out of his way.

 

"The tray should arrive soon, when it does, you need to eat. Even if you feel unwell, even if nothing smells right, Lyarra, you have to keep your strength up for the child."

 

Lyarra nodded and she felt her husband's breath stir her curls in every direction as he sighed heavily.

 

"Lyarra, you have nothing to be ashamed of. I expected a cold marriage, unwanted by both of us, but you are a wonderful, _passionate_ young woman. I asked not for this life, and would yet choose differently if offered, but I would not choose to forgo you. Rather I would have the privilege of showing you yet more of the pleasures life offers us. Pleasure now barred from the both of us by our Marks."

 

"I don't wish to speak of it." Lyarra countered stiffly.

 

She could feel him struggling with that. Her husband's pride was considerable. He was a frustrating, arrogant, and violently tempestuous man as often as he was a gentle, considerate, husband. He didn't wish to give up and cease speaking. He wanted to carry on the argument until she agreed with him. Lyarra had no doubt that, if he could, he'd convince her to make love on a table in the Great Hall just to prove he wasn't ashamed. If anything, she realized, he'd probably been proud of the fact that their entire entourage could hear their lovemaking. It was another disturbing reminder of how differently they felt and thought and the great gulf between their ages and experience.

 

"As you wish." Oberyn allowed stiffly, but moved to drag her a little closer against him, back to chest, as he kissed her temple. "What shall we speak of instead?"

 

Too tired to lie even to herself, Lyarra's mind lit on a subject she'd wanted to speak to him of for two days. It was not, however, a subject she'd felt comfortable raising. It risked the fragile peace she'd watched develop too well. Now, too tired to regulate herself, she spoke.

 

"Gwyn told me that you knew something about the man who killed the Princess Rhaenys, and that she gave you his name."

 

That had left Lyarra feeling something she couldn't quite identify. There was relief there, and there was satisfaction. She'd thought Gwyn knew something and she'd hated that her friend wasn't helping justice be done. Ned Stark hadn't raised Lyarra to let murderers walk the world free and easy simply because they had the protection of powerful men. Seeing her father's hands tied by a dreadful oath had upset her nearly as much as the constant background hum of her husband's grief for his sister and her children.

 

Still, it left her uneasy. Lyarra could identify part of why. For the first time in too long, she had a chance to just sit up all night and speak to her friend. Gwyn hadn't told her much beyond what she'd told Oberyn, but what she'd heard had bothered her. Then there was the fear of what her husband was going to do…

 

"Yes-." Oberyn's response was cut off by a knock at the door and he rolled out of bed. Lyarra stayed beneath the covers and waited, feeling her lips turn up when she heard the servant who'd brought the tray basically scampering away at the sight of whatever expression was upon her husband's face.

 

"No, stay in bed." Oberyn countered when he saw her roll over and begin to move her feet to the edge.

 

"Oberyn, we can't eat in bed. We'll get crumbs everywhere."

 

"At which point we shall order the servants to change the sheets. You are resting, _Your Grace,_ and your Prince and Husband will order you to do so if required."

 

Oberyn got a glare that could have stripped paint for that, but Lyarra could hardly argue with it. He was a prince and he was her husband, and she was too damned dizzy to stand up easily. The Viper won this round.

 

Thoughts of what the servants would say, having seen her husband receiving the tray at the door half-dressed doused her temper in disgrace. Given what everyone had to be saying about her she knew what rumors would follow. Pressing her face into the pillow, Lyarra stifled the urge to cry. It had never done her any good in her life before to shed tears over indignities she couldn't help or avert. What good would it do her now?

 

* * *

 

The Red Viper was angry. Presently, it was a fairly long list of individuals he was furious with. It began with Edmure Tully for being an uncouth lout and making such a jape to Lyarra's face. Behind her back would have been little better, of course, but at least she wouldn't be bathing in her own misery.

 

Oberyn was also wroth with essentially the entire continent of Westeros north of the Red Mountains. While Oberyn could admit that he was a more extreme case of aggressive sensuality and shamelessness than was normal in Dorne, Lyarra's reaction was beyond what he'd expected. Yes, he'd expected her to be upset should someone comment on being able to overheard their lovemaking, but he hadn't expected her to be so utterly humiliated. After all, anyone in a large tent encampment, including anyone who'd gone to war, could tell you that you essentially overheard everything that happened within the camp. Encounters with whores, suffering through the bloody flux, the groans of the injured; tents did not assure any measure of privacy. He'd assumed she'd have at least some small knowledge of that fact, and that as long as no-one commented she would be alright.

 

That was obviously not the case. Oberyn had spent the last fortnight being smugly pleased as his ability to experience his soulmate's moods through their bond expanded. Now he was beginning to wish he was once more the more oblivious side of their shared Marks.

 

Folding his legs like a tailor he sat opposite her on the bed as she rose, propping herself back against the pillows. He ignored that she took both and offered him none. He misliked how pale she was. He'd noticed the slight nausea and the tiredness that came with pregnancy in his wife. He had not noticed that her already pale skin had acquired a gray undertone. Oberyn was too busy listening to Hoster Tully's political maneuvering and getting a feel for the capabilities of the man's Heir. If, through Ned Stark, the Riverlands could be brought in on Dorne's side when the inevitable happened, it would be preferable.

 

"You wished to speak of your friend." Oberyn prompted.

 

He'd rather have continued to talk some sense into her about her overdeveloped sense of shame, but he wished to see her eat and calm down more. Intellectually he knew that pregnant women sometimes swooned. Ellaria had done it with two of their daughters and their girls had been born hale and hearty, and Ellaria's labors had been easy. Still, Oberyn always panicked slightly when it happened. The sight of a woman he cared for, who carried his child, just collapsing triggered in him too many memories of Elia's horrid pregnancies.

 

"Gwyn seems a lot better. She's more herself and less frightened." Lyarra said after a moment spent nibbling on a wedge of pale cheese.

 

Oberyn poured himself a hearty cup of wine. He also poured a small amount of wine into a second cup and then watered it well for his wife. She accepted it with a subdued sigh and thanked him quietly.

 

"I am no perfect knight or prince." Oberyn allowed. "It is hard for me, sometimes, to look at her and not merely see her Lannister blood. Lady Gwyn has been harmed by them greatly, however, and reminding myself of that helps. It is… _frustrating_ to see an ally acting against you."

 

"She's not any longer."

 

"True, but she has more to tell." Oberyn breathed out and allowed himself a smile he knew to be cruel. "I have a starting point, however."

 

"What do you plan to do?"

 

The question was asked levelly, and her expression was moderated and closed. Oberyn disliked that simply because he hadn't had such a look directed at him for a while. Mentally he grabbed his frustration and roughly stuffed it into a box before he could sabotage his progress before he made any. No matter how much he thought her reaction excessive, she had a right to it. Moreover, fighting directly against it would do him no good now that he'd accidentally harmed the trust he'd built with Lyarra. Truth would be his best ally.

 

"Kill Amory Lorch." Oberyn picked up a strawberry from the tray as she grabbed a handful of blueberries. "As to how? I do not know. I know not whether he will be at King's Landing or not. If he remains in the Westerlands, a more extended plan needs be arranged."

 

Lyarra nodded, but said nothing, nibbling on her handful of berries without enthusiasm.

 

"If the murderous creature is out of favor with the Old Lion," Oberyn spoke Tywin Lannister's moniker with scorn. "Then he is unlikely to be at the capitol. He might show up for the tourney, though if he does, he will not joust. I do not normally participate in the melee, so that is a potential vehicle for vengeance, though not the best."

 

Again she was silent.

 

"Lyarra," Oberyn leaned forward and rested his hand on hers. "I will not endanger you or our child in this."

 

"I know."

 

"You do not sound very certain."

 

"I was _certain_ this morning that what we shared was safe from mockery, and that being a princess was a different affair from being a bastard half-unwelcome in the home of my forefathers!" Lyarra replied, her own temper bursting forth again. "I am as _certain_ as I can be where you are concerned now, Oberyn. I do not begrudge you your vengeance. I would never begrudge justice for a terrified little girl as your niece was. That man _deserves_ to die and if you were unable to do it, _I_ would. I'm just - I do not... Oberyn, it feels as though nothing between us is as I thought!"

 

A rapid, loud knock sounded on the door. It saved Oberyn the chore of finding some response to that beyond arguing that Lyarra was overreacting. He was not so stupid as to have raised so many daughters without knowing that was something you never told a woman. Besides, how many times had Doran infuriated him with the same accusation?

 

Standing up, Oberyn frowned down at the mostly uneaten contents of the tray. Then he put back the rest of is wine and went to answer the door. On the opposite side of it he found a tiny glaring brunette and a nervous redheaded boy wearing a stubborn expression.

 

"Should I fear for where Nymeria is, or are all of your direwolves penned?" Oberyn asked and Arya's scowl grew to toxic levels.

 

"Father made us pen them all in the kennels. Nymeria bit one of the hounds, though, and I would have been here sooner but it wasn't the hound's fault so I had to get him a bone and apologize."

 

"When someone upsets Lyarra, Robb beats them." Bran Stark also offered up, his tone solemn and angry in a mirror of his father. "Knights don't upset maidens, they save them."

 

"In the songs and stories, yes, but it seems marriage is a more complicated affair." Oberyn stepped back and allowed the children to enter. "Lyarra, you have visitors."

 

"You don't get to hide in your room _here_ , either!" Arya declared and scrambled up, kicking her slippers off and climbing up onto the bed in a thoroughly mussed gown to embrace her sister. "We won't let you. Gwyn's coming too, but I told her she should make tarts first."

 

"So she's making your favorite. Blackberry tarts, and dark honey cakes." Bran emphasized the importance of sweets in fixing any solution as he crawled up as well, firmly taking up the space Oberyn had occupied.

 

Feeling his wife's mood not so much lift as the darkness lighten Oberyn realized that he was not making the situation better. Little as he liked it, Oberyn understood it. How many times had his sister lingered, frail, after some bout of illness as a child? Who but himself had insisted on throwing himself across her bed at her feet and harassing her until he earned one of Elia's treasures smiles?

 

"I kicked Uncle Edmure in the shins for you."

 

"Father's done yelling and will come up soon, but grandfather just started yelling at him."

 

"I shall go find my place in line, then." Oberyn spoke lightly and walked towards the bed, ignoring the gray and blue eyes glaring at him. "Arya, Bran, your sister and I have some very good news to offer you."

 

Lyarra's eyes widened, obviously anticipating what he was about to say. He nodded at her, offering her the chance and she frowned. He needn't ask why. He was the one who'd insisted it would be best to share the pregnancy only when they were on the road again, away from Riverrun and its gossips.

 

"As this is family, I think an exception can be made." Oberyn looked at his wife and spoke, hoping getting to share the news would help her somewhat. He looked at both of the children. "However, for now this is a secret. I do not want it shared beyond everyone in this room and your father, yes?"

 

Bran nodded in agreement while Arya turned to Lyarra and demanded to be told the secret. A little color had come back into Lyarra's cheeks as she flushed.

 

"Arya, you and Bran are going to become an aunt and uncle in perhaps seven or eight moons time."

 

It took a moment for both of them to work it out. The results were delightful and Oberyn found it within himself to smile again. First the children's eyes widened. Then they stared at Lyarra's stomach, then up at her face, and then back at him. You would think that in such a large family a pregnancy wouldn't spark such shock, but it had.

 

"You're pregnant, Lia?!" Arya demande din an aghast whisper.

 

"Yes." Lyarra's blush darkened. "And I'm very happy to be. You know I always wanted to be a mother, Arya."

 

" _Already_?"

 

Bran just seemed shocked, he was also blushing. Then again, he'd also just realized that the sounds he'd been hearing from his sister's tent related to her and her husband actually having sex. The boy's knowledge of the facts of life was apparently rather bare at this point, and coupling wasn't something he understood enough to be more than horrified by the general idea.

 

"Yes." Oberyn grinned smugly and was gratified when he leaned down and Lyarra reluctantly allowed him to press a kiss to her cheek and rest a hand on her belly. "Arya, as you are coming to Dorne with us, I'm trusting you to keep an eye on your sister during our journey. She has not been eating well and she's been swooning."

 

"Once!" Lyarra burst out. "I swooned _once_."

 

"You _fainted_?"

 

Oberyn headed to the door. He was content to leave Lyarra to the overprotective shock of her siblings, confident that they would care well for her. As for himself? While murder was out of the question, that did leave a _lot_ on the table as far as retribution went, didn't it?

 

"Oberyn?" Lyarra asked, her tone soft and he stopped and turned, somewhat hopeful she would bid him to stay.

 

"Yes, darling?"

 

"I would be grateful if, while I speak to my brother and sister, you told my father our good news."

 

Pausing, Oberyn bowed in acknowledgement and agreement to her request. He also reflected with a mix of pride and chagrin that his wife did have a good grasp of the concept of revenge. With a mix of anticipation for Ned Stark's horror and caution as to his possible reaction, the Viper went off to inform his goodfather that he'd make him a grandfather within the year.

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyarra and Oberyn make up. Gwyn finds new and interesting crawly things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There is a sex scene in this chapter. If you want to by pass them skip from the *** to the ***. :)

**Chapter Eighteen - 297 A.C.**

 

Their leave-taking at Riverrun had been awkward in the extreme. Lord Hoster was embarrassed at his son’s uncouth comment, but could hardly throw his only heir to the mercy of a furious husband or father. Especially when the infuriated father in question was Lord Hoster’s goodson. That the insult had been directed at a Princess of Dorne, and her husband was notorious as well as high ranking just made it worse. In the end Hoster had just solved it by sending his son out to hunt bandits again. The further Edmure Tully was from the Red Viper the more relieved the man’s father felt.

Lyarra’s embarrassment was exacerbated by the reality of parting from yet more of her family. When they left Riverrun to continue their journey to King’s Landing, Ser Brynden Tully stood with a hand on Bran’s shoulder while Lyarra’s little brother worked hard not to cry. The Blackfish and his squire left for Winterfell at the same time that Lyarra’s own journey continued. Clutching her brother to her chest she promised to write frequently, as she had with Robb, and though she wasn’t as close to her younger brother as she’d been to her almost-twin Lyarra still felt as though some kind of spiritual amputation had occurred. 

Rather than take the River Road, they had chosen to cut straight southeast at Lord Hoster’s advice. The roads themselves were no safer than the countryside when it came to bandits. As it was their party was large enough and well-armed enough that it was unlikely that any would dare accost them. 

“Come on.” Gwyn’s quiet voice distracted Lyarra from the walking stick she was carving.

The camp was relatively quiet, or at least quieter than it might have been before Riverrun. Lyarra wasn’t unaware of the tension now running between the two separate parts of the party. The Northern party believed the Dornish had shamed their Lord’s daughter, and embarrassed Lord Stark by extension. The approval Lyarra had enjoyed had ebbed. It had lulled her into thinking a legitimization and a title would keep the same sharp tongues that had mocked her bastardy at bay, but she found that to be false. The bulk of the North, she thought bitterly, was just pleased to have gotten such wonderful winter stores in exchange for an otherwise useless bastard daughter.

Then there were the Dornish. Lyarra had grown to know her husband’s people well, or she thought she had. The haughty nature of the Dornish was less true arrogance in most than a defense against the way that the rest of Westeros looked down on them. It was also rooted in a fierce independence that was much like the land Lyarra had been raised in. 

The problem was that now the two fiercely proud, independent groups were no longer moving with each other. Like two oxen that couldn’t quite bring themselves to pull together in the yoke, the two parts of the party from Winterfell were making each others’ lives more difficult. LIke the wood of an ox yoke under too much pressure, there was also an increasing danger something would snap.

Lyarra had no idea what to do about it. She felt as though she’d ruined everything. Miserable and yet still angry, she’d withdrawn into herself. The smooth piece of white ash in her hands was a comfort, but she also knew it was something to hide behind.

“Gwyn?” Lyarra looked up from her work.

Gwyn was, as always, busy. Lyarra had long ago learned that, if left unoccupied, Gwyn tended to cause havoc. She didn’t mean to any more than Lyarra meant to be melancholy, but it was part of Gwyn’s nature. Her mind was overactive, and she had a nervous disposition. Without something to occupying that quick, high-strung nature Gwyn would go  _ looking _ for something. 

Thankfully for Lyarra, Oberyn had instantly agreed to that. As Gwyn moved in and naturally began working with, and then assuming oversight, over certain parts of the camp and servants no-one had objected. First, it was a good way for Oberyn to get her friend to relax, and Lyarra knew that underneath Oberyn’s genuine wish not to see a young girl miserable he was always working to see Gwyn at ease enough to speak on her past and what she knew. Secondly, Lyarra knew nobody at all could complain about Gwyn’s taking over any kind of cooking duties. Gwyn was simply that good a cook, and that good at organizing things.

What Gwyn wasn’t good at was making informed life choices.

“Nobody’s watching.” Gwyn nodded around them. “Let’s get some air.”

Lyarra looked around. She’d followed Gwyn over by the cooking fires that evening, intent on gaining some space from Lady Jynessa’s well-meant advice and any attempt by her husband to speak to her. He was  _ still _ trying to convince her that she’d done no wrong and it was everyone else’s fault somehow. Moreover, he was still trying to convince her it wasn’t  _ his _ fault, either, and that shamelessness was some kind of higher level of philosophical understanding. 

Ghost was currently curled up at Lyarra’s feet. Sensing her person’s mood, the she-wolf had been been aggressively standoffish since they’d left Riverrun. Silent snarls and watchful bristling had kept the whole camp on their toes around the white wolf. Moreover, one look at ghost’s red-eyed gaze was enough to give everyone cause to leave a wide berth around the growing direwolf and the princess she was guarding.

As a result of this and Gwyn’s sharp tongue, they’d essentially been left alone at the small cooking fire. At the larger fire a little ways off Gwyn had already organized the roasting of a recently caught deer. Skinned and gutted, it turned over the fire under the watchful eyes of a gaggle of servants who were also busy with matters such as roast vegetables. 

Gwyn had been doing  _ something _ arcane around the fire. Lyarra had assumed it had to do with cooking simply because of where they were. Now, as Lyarra looked, she realized Gwyn had merely been giving the appearance of being busy while she redistributed those people working near them. As it was, the larger fire, the deer on its spit, a group of Northern guards hovering around in hopes of getting first serving, and a Dornish guard mending a saddle totally blocked them from view. All of those people also had their backs to Lyarra and Gwyn.

Torn between knowing she  _ shouldn’t _ and the same desperation for peace and privacy she’d had since Edmure Tully had opened his godsdamned mouth, Lyarra shook hands with Gwyn’s reckless desire to please her and quietly stood up. Beside her Ghost rose and Gwyn brushed her hands on a ragged, but clean, towel before depositing it on the log Lyarra had been seated on and nodding towards the thin gap in the brush. Realizing it was a game trail that had to run down towards the river, Lyarra grinned.

It was a beautiful afternoon. Warm enough that Lyarra and Gwyn both had sweat beading on their foreheads after they’d traveled the two hundred yards or so necessary to find the banks of the creek, but not  _ too _ warm. Lyarra had actually been pleasantly surprised by the heat of summer in the South. She’d expected to be miserable and complain, as her father was wont to do as he sweated in his boiled leathers and mail. Instead found herself drowsily enjoying it. She missed the cold, crisp air of the North so much it hurt sometimes, but there was an alien pleasure to feeling the heat settle low in her bones.

“Better?” 

“Much. I feel like I can  _ breathe _ again.” 

Lyarra inhaled the cool air around the creek and found a large, smooth rock to take a seat on, tugging off her boots and sinking her toes into the water tumbling over the rounded rocks at the edge of the broad creek they’d come upon. They were where now surrounded by the large and small tributaries that fed the Blackwater Rush, and Lyarra admired the crystal clear water of this one as Gwyn began to pick through the rocks, tapping them with a small stone she’d picked up and turning one over every now and then for a better look. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Lyarra, I thought you’d have realized how much noise you were making.” Gwyn apologized, her expression miserable. 

“It’s not your fault.” Lyarra winced, looking at the miserable expression on her friend’s face and finding it easier to forgive Gwyn than others. “And even if it was, I forgive you. You probably thought the same thing  _ he _ did. That I just didn’t care.”

“Actually, I thought it would kind of be  good revenge. Everyone always talks about how sinful and lustful bastards are, so, well, now you can  _ enjoy _ it with a husband the Gods picked out just for such an occasion?”

Lyarra groaned and raised a hand to her face, reaching out to pat Ghost’s head as her direwolf leaned forward to nuzzle at her face in support before darting off into the underbrush to scout the area. 

“I just remembered why it’s so easy to forgive you, Gwyn.” Lyarra huffed. “I have so much  _ practice _ .”

“I’m horrible.” Gwyn acknowledged with a kind of sheepish pride. “I can’t help it, it’s hereditary.”

Lyarra managed a choked laugh. Then she grinned at her friend. Derogatory jokes about the Lannisters and her own Lannister blood had been a steady source of amusement for the Stark children since Gwyn had first come out of her shell. They’d dried up as soon as the Dornish had arrived. Hearing them again loosened something tight in Lyarra’s chest.

“How are you feeling?” Gwyn asked, abandoning her rock hunting after only stuffing two into the pockets of the plain brown gown she was wearing, and coming to sit by Lyarra. “You’re not feeling faint, are you?”

“That’s only if I don’t eat enough, and if Oberyn isn’t glaring at my plate, then you and Arya and Father are shoving food at me.” Lyarra rolled her eyes. “You’re going to make me fat.”

“You’re with child. You’re going to get fat whether you like it or not.”

Lyarra shoved Gwyn halfway off the rock, and her friend laughed, barely saving herself from falling into the creek. Gwyn rose again, though, and nudged Lyarra with her shoulder as she went on with her questions.

“What about you and the Prince? Is  _ that _ well?”

Lyarra glared at Gwyn.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, and then ask for details.”

Lyarra pursed her lips and glared harder. 

“So you’re still mad at him?”

Lyarra turned away, trying to ignore the blonde.

“Is it a  _ little _ mad, like refusing to bed him mad, or is it the kind of mad where you’re hurt underneath and hiding from it?  _ Oh _ , or is it the kind of mad where you need to borrow my jar of spiders? I’ve got a second jar now, I can spare one.”

_ “Gwyn!” _ Lyarra gave up on trying defeat her friend’s loud-mouth through silence and looked up to find a smug grin facing her over Gwyn’s sharp jawline.

“The second jar is really  _ nippy _ .” 

Lyarra groaned and shook her head. 

“I  _ am _ mad at him, but I’m not-.” Lyarra blushed as she tried to speak. “I’m not refusing him because of  _ that _ . Lady Jynessa thinks I’m being petty towards him, and I  _ feel _ petty, but that’s not why. I just - everytime he touches me or tries to I feel like the whole camp is out there,  _ listening _ , and I feel dirty.”

Gwyn’s impish expression crumbled into sympathy. Whatever she was about to say was forestalled by an irritated exclamation, and then a yelp followed by rustling in the underbrush that had Lyarra on her feet with one hand raising the knife she’d been carving with protectively as she realized in frustration with herself that she’d left her sword behind. Beside her Gwyn snatched up a rock and drew it back. 

Ser Daemon Sand stumbled out of the underbrush with Ghost at his heels. Judging from the bloodless tear in the knee of his trousers, he’d been subject to an aggressive nip. Lyarra was just grateful that was all it had been. Ghost was as on-edge as she was. 

“Princess, call her off!” The knight called as he jogged forward while Gwyn laughed.

“Ghost!” Lyarra obliged and her friend trotted over, baring her teeth once as she passed the knight. “Are you alright, Ser Daemon?”

“Lord Stark says that a fully grown direwolf can rip a man’s arm off like it’s nothing.” Gwyn added cheerfully and Lyarra shot her friend an exasperated look.

“Tis but a scratch, Princess, but you shouldn’t go about unguarded.” Ser Daemon replied coming over and offering her a short, polite bow. “Ser Arron will skin me alive, if the Prince does not.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was under guard in camp.” Lyarra replied, growing irritated.

“In camp, no, but you’re  _ not _ in camp.” 

“I am not far.”

“You are far enough.”

Lyarra had no intention of getting into an argument with Ser Daemon. She  _ liked _ the man. He, like she had been most of her life and felt she always would be at heart, was a bastard. He was an excellent swordsman, and fine company. He was polite, courageous, and out of all of the party that had once been her husband’s lover, he’d never once seen fit to mention it or offer her advice. He’d also been visibly angry on her behalf after Lord Edmure’s jape.

“Then perhaps we should go back.” Lyarra offered, suddenly too exhausted to care.

“That might be for the best, your highness.”

Gwyn silently followed along, her expression pleasantly blank. Lyarra, however, knew her friend was annoyed. Gwyn was aware how desperately Lyarra just wanted some space to think, to arrange herself inside again so she didn’t feel disordered and jangled beneath her skin, and Gwyn would resent anything that she felt was preventing her from helping her friend. She caught Gwyn’s eye and shook her head. Gwyn frowned and made a gesture with her fingers like something was crawling. Lyarra scowled and shook her head again and Gwyn sighed and nodded. Lyarra hoped Ser Daemon appreciated being saved from unfolding his gear in the morning to find it crawling with countless spiders, or perhaps millipedes. 

The many-legged crawlies were everywhere in the Riverlands and apparently uncommon in Dorne. So far several alarmed Dornishmen had already let the world know their disapproval of finding one of the things in their boots when they awoke. Unlike the Northerners, however, none of the Dornish had been bitten by the things.  _ They _ all carefully shook their boots out for scorpions out of habit before they put anything on their feet.

 

* * *

 

“Very good, Lady Arya, you are much improved.” Oberyn praised and ignored the sullen look he got in return as he stepped back from where Arya sat by a folding scribe’s table.

A fresh sheet of parchment had been secured to it. Just that morning Oberyn had lined the parchment with a stylus, and taken the time to box out areas of enlarged script and trace in light blue ink the lines of the elaborate illumination that Dornish work was famed for. Sunspear was known all over Westeros and Essos for its calligraphy, and as Oberyn had aged his childhood taste for drawing had drifted towards more stylized work. 

“I’m much improved because I’m doing it alot.” Arya muttered and Oberyn smirked tiredly.

“Out of the two of us, Arya, who needs to take responsibility for  _ that _ ?” 

Arya muttered and kicked the rungs of her stool. Oberyn mimed putting a hand to his ear and curling it like a half-deaf old man. Arya hunched aggressively and he waited beside her  until she finally sighed and answered.

_ “Me. _ ”

“Why?”

“Because I’m smart enough to know when to fight, and to know  _ who _ to fight with. Which means no brawling with village boys.” Arya allowed and her dark head lowered slightly towards the half-finished page. “Sorry, Prince Oberyn.”

“Very well.” Oberyn relented slightly, missing his own daughters too much to maintain the punishment further for the night. “You may finish your punishment tomorrow. You may have supper with your father tonight. Do not forget what you learned today.”

“I won’t!” Arya promised and was off like a shot with Nymeria getting up from her own sullen lair underneath the wheelhouse as she ran after her person.

The Red Viper groaned into his hands and didn’t bother to look up at the man he heard approaching him. Sand, gravel, or leafy underbrush, he’d recognize that tread anywhere. Idly he smacked at the hand that was attempting to pat him on the shoulder. Then he reached up and smoothed a hand over his mustache and beard, which was growing in need of a trim now that he’d fully grown it in.

“It’s like Obella at that age all over again.” Oberyn complained to the Dornish Knight.

“Not Obara?” Ser Ulwyk asked, clearly amused.

“No, no,” Oberyn shook his head, “Obara was the  _ easy _ child. As long as she had her time in the practice yard and her weapons she was as agreeable as Quentyn or Trystane ever were. She was the  _ only _ one of my girls that never argued with a punishment.  _ Nothing _ like me, likely enough, save in her love of the song of swords. Nymeria liked to test, of course, and Lia grows surly if she doesn’t get her way, but this constant need to  _ push _ ? That’s Obella.”

“And you.”

“If I wasn’t absolutely sure Lady Stark would have given me frostbite I’d never forget, I’d wonder if I’d ventured North blind drunk sometime over eight years ago and forgotten.” Oberyn looked skyward at the gray clouds overhead. “I always assumed it was arrogance that drove Brandon Stark into the Stranger’s arms at the Red Keep. Arrogance with a dash of idiocy. Now I’m not sure that it wasn’t a combination of righteous fury and the fact that nobody sat the ass down and explained to him that the world never  _ has _ been just and we must  _ make _ it so in an  _ intelligent manner _ .”

“Perhaps spitting in King Scab’s face was the Wild Wolf’s attempt to make it so.” The Uller knight mused and Oberyn pulled a face.

“If so I must return to my belief that it was idiocy.”

“I’d say a lack of training is more on the nose.” Ser Ulwyk shook his head and nodded towards where food was being cut up and dished out. “These Northerners aren’t bad people, but  _ none _ of them understand the Game. Or, really, they think they can just not play it.”

“If they stay North, they don’t have to.” Oberyn replied. “Just as we do not if we choose to close the Pass and have a navy to prevent landings.”

“Speaking of?”

“I got a raven from Doran.” Oberyn allowed himself a small smile past all of the frustration and irritation he was feeling. “Fifty warships. It is not the Redwyne fleet, but…”

“But it  _ is _ a navy of our own.” The other man grinned fiercely before his expression shifted. “How long to build it?”

“Thanks to the lumber from Lyarra’s dowry and further negotiations we will have the ships in two to three years. Mayhaps longer should the labor be insufficient. A lot will depend on Starfall’s shipwrights. Planky Town cannot handle the bulk of it.”

Ser Ulwyk mulled over that and slowly nodded. 

“Is that why you’ve taken Edric Dayne as your squire? I hear the boy will be in Sunspear waiting with his sister when you return.”

“Partially.” Oberyn allowed. “It was decided before we knew the amount of lumber we would receive in Lyarra’s dowry. Lord Dayne’s health has never recovered after that fall he took four years ago, and he’s concerned with his house’s future. After what the Darkstar did to Arianne House Dayne’s honor is blighted. Offering Edric Dayne as my squire is much the same as Quentyn’s stay with House Yronwood. It also allows Lord Dayne’s younger sister, Lady Allyria, to find a Dornish husband while in Sunspear while she is part of my wife’s household.”

“I’ll have to make a point to meet the lady.” Ulwyk wryly allowed. “I have my own duties to my house it is long past time I stopped shirking. What else had our Prince to say?”

“He claims he is doing well, but Trystane wrote that his gout has flared up and he is more in his chair. Trystane is watching closely that he does not take a fall as he did last year when I was attending to the brigands. Mine nephew blames the worsening on the necessity for Doran to keep court at Sunspear.” Oberyn let out an annoyed breath. “If we had left by ship from White Harbor I would already be in Sunspear and Doran could be at the Water Gardens.”

Ser Ulwyk was one of the few who knew that taking to the Water Gardens wasn’t just a choice to remove himself from the public eye. Doran’s gout was much improved by soaking in the mineral rich waters of the springs that fed the Water Gardens. Long months at Sunspear would not present the same opportunity and his gout would be worsened by it. Splitting the court, so that Oberyn handled the martial aspect and dealt with the exhaustive efforts of attention seekers and social climbers, allowed Doran the freedom to both run the country well and continue to treat his illness.

“Our Prince would endure worse pains than what wracks him now to see his sister’s ghost rest in peace and her babe’s avenged.” Ulwyk’s words drew a hiss from Oberyn and his friend went on more quietly as they moved to the side slightly, taking a longer trip to where food was being prepared. “Have you heard anything else from the Lady Gwyn?”

Knowing that Ser Amory Lorch was one of the culprits behind the foul murders during the Sack of King’s Landing, and that Lady Gwyn had taken a suspicion and given them a Name had softened the Dornish party towards the young girl considerably. Oberyn’s purposeful quashing of his own temper had helped further. Seeing the difference between the girl’s cold, controlled behavior at the beginning of the journey and the more animated, mischievous child the newly flowered maiden could be when not terrified had done yet more. The Lannisters had  _ much _ to answer for.

“Not a word.” Oberyn glared. “In case you haven’t noticed my wife is wroth with me. If the Princess is wroth with someone then you can be assured that the Lady Gwyn is secretly plotting their murder.”

“She can’t murder you, it would kill the Princess.”

“You needn’t sound so amused by the situation.” Oberyn griped. “At the moment the Lady Gwyn’s solution to this is to be constantly underfoot when I would have her absent so I could speak to my wife. Oh, and let us not forget the fact that every time I attempt to eat something it is miraculously the  _ only _ poorly seasoned cut of meat or stale bread available. Or the mysterious fact that out of a whole batch of pastries mine was the only where salt and sugar had been confused in the mixing process.”

“Or the crawly things. Nothing should have so many legs. What do the riverlanders call them?”

“Millipedes, but I’m actually not vexed over that. I respect the hard work she put into collecting enough to fill my boots. The girl must have been up most of the night.”

“Prowling with no guard?” To his credit, Ser Ulwyk looked worried. “If she intends to torment you with the results of her labor, I’ll volunteer my services.”

“You needn’t. Lord Stark looked particularly amused that morning, so I have a feeling she had a Quiet Wolf prowling with her  _ other _ than my wife’s companion.” Oberyn rolled his eyes.

“I think I like the man more for that idea.” The future Lord of Hellholt murmured and then frowned. “Hm, Oberyn…”

“I see.” Oberyn agreed tersely.

Lyarra, his  _ pregnant _ wife, was slipping back into camp with her friend. A lady who had nearly a moon until she saw five-and-ten, and a maiden who had nearly a year to go before she saw four-and-ten together with but one guard. Ser Daemon was with them, but Oberyn noted the tense look on his friend’s handsome young face and the surly way that Ghost was treating the knight. The later was a sure indication that Daemon’s presence was not invited, nor was the Sand on guard duty. This was a fairly good indication that the man had not been invited along on whatever jaunt outside the camp the two ladies had taken.

Indeed, as Lyarra had spoken of no plans to leave the camp, no-one was specifically guarding her. In deference to her need for privacy after Edmure Tully’s graceless comment, Oberyn had tried to allow his young wife space. He’d insisted she share his tent and not the wheelhouse, as he wouldn’t tolerate rumors that their marriage had any severe problems when they were so close to the Usurper’s seat, but he’d tried to allow her room to come to grips with how the stupidity of the untested man who’d soon be Lord Protector of the Trident had affected her. 

Lyarra and Gwyn both showed damp stains across the low edges of their skirts. The later was turning a water-smoothed rock of some kind over in her hands and looking at it closely in the light of the setting sun. He didn’t need the education he’d received to know that they’d been down at the creek, mayhaps all the way to the river itself, and likely unaccompanied until Daemon had gone in search of them.

“You need to stop hiding from your wife and talk to the girl.”

“First, I am  _ hiding _ from no-one.” Oberyn glared at his friend. “I am giving her a respectful distance. Secondly, what do you know of wives?”

“Nothing, but you should think less of  _ wives _ and more of ladies of her age.” 

Oberyn winced, as his wife’s age was something he tried very hard not to dwell on. He doubted he would ever become comfortable with the gap between their ages. Japing about it with Lyarra, as he had just managed to start before Riverrun had turned into a disaster, was the closest he’d come to considering it at any length without being dismayed. 

“You are likely right.” Oberyn admitted reluctantly before adding, “You should write it down so that you never forget this moment. It is unlikely to ever come again.”

“If you mean hearing the Red Viper admit he’s wrong? Yes, I shall most certainly write it down. When I get home I will have it graven in stone. Something decorative, perhaps, as a gift to your brother so my Prince can put it in the Water Gardens for posterity.”

In a display of impressive dexterity  _ and _ maturity, Oberyn brought one sharp elbow into his friend’s well-muscled ribs. Then he stepped aside out of the way of the following jab. Leaving Ulwyk to wheeze  as the breath was knocked out of him, Oberyn went to see if he could pick up a plate left unattended rather than risk whatever he’d get handed. He’d spent  _ years _ perfecting the ability to pick out and avoid poison, and he had to admit he had a hint of admiration at how the little Westerlands girl had gotten around that. 

After all, she  _ wasn’t _ getting into a contest of poisons with a master. Instead she was just giving him bad food. There was a certain genius to that.

 

* * *

 

“Did you just steal Jory’s plate?”

“No, I  _ swapped _ plates, as mine was much more full I am sure he is nothing but grateful.”

Lyarra watched as Jory Cassel took a bite of his roast venison and his expression shifted from pleasure to shocked surprise. Standing up and wearing a perplexed expression he brought it to Gwyn, who was standing with the servers as she often did despite having the rank now not to as one of Lyarra’s ladies in waiting. Gwyn used her own knife to spear a bite, her blue eyes got wide, then she swallowed reluctantly, took the plate back, and fixed him another. Nymeria got the plate’s contents instead and showed every sign of enjoying it.

“She wouldn’t try to poison you.” Lyarra sighed, hoping to make amends and getting a short laugh instead.

“Most poisons are actually quite pleasant in taste. It’s the antidotes that are foul.” Oberyn observed, taking a bite of the perfectly seasoned venison. Lyarra had no idea what her friend had done to it, but it was a mix of sweet and hot that she attributed to horseradish. “This, however, is very good. What do you think she did to what she originally intended for me?”

“Some kind of sour vinegar and pickling brine. They react badly to each other, though I’m not sure why. She uses them each separately in cooking and they’re quite good.”

Oberyn hummed softly and continued to chew. Lyarra used her knife to move her food around the wooden trencher in her hands. Gwyn had been overly generous, as she had been since Lyarra had told her of her pregnancy. It smelled wonderful, now if only she could bring herself to  _ eat _ it when food just seemed unappetizing in general. 

“We will ask after something lighter in the next village. More fruit, mayhaps, or fresh vegetables.”

“Fish.” Lyarra blinked, and suddenly longed for just that.

“Then tomorrow I will send someone to go fishing and catch up to us on the road.” He grinned at her and a little of the tension unknotted in her for a moment.

“Thank you.”

“It is my duty and my pleasure.”

Lyarra stiffened at the insinuation in his voice, the soft purr she’d come to enjoy and now didn’t trust herself not to respond to in some humiliating way she  _ thought _ was invisible but was not. They were sitting a bit away from the others, but it didn’t feel like enough. It was a nice night, if rain threatened, and no-one had brought out the tables. Instead, logs had been dragged up out of the wood and folding chairs from the tents, and everyone was comfortably seated with a plate in their lap, or standing in a knot to talk to their companions. 

“Lyarra, I need to apologize.” Oberyn’s voice was soft and when she looked up into his handsome face the lines around his eyes and mouth were twisted in self-deprecation. “I’ve obviously fucked up far more seriously than I intended.”

“I would rather not talk of it here.”

“Then we shall not, but I would  _ talk _ of it, not argue.” He went on and Lyarra nodded.

To her relief her father chose to walk up then. She smiled only to let out a huff of breath when she saw Lord Stark grinning as he produced a neat pocket of golden dough with red peeking through the steaming slits in the top. Gwyn, it seemed, had made cherry hand pies. Lyarra’s stomach turned over a little and she felt herself pale. Her father’s face fell and she felt guilty.

“Lyarra?” Oberyn’s inquiry, quick and softly worried added to the guilt and she sighed and explained quietly.

“The baby only wants to eat a little at a time. Any more than that and I feel queasy.”

“Have you been sick?” Oberyn asked and slid closer on the log, setting his plate aside.

“No, just… I feel  _ off _ when my stomach is full.” She made a face and took another small bite, this time of the warm, buttery greens that went with the meat. That was slightly better. “Or I eat something particularly heavy.”

“You need hearty food, Lyarra, you - well, you need it.” Lord Stark had agreed completely with Oberyn that they need not broadcast her condition, but he was far less practiced in not simply saying what was on his mind when he spoke. 

Lyarra watched Oberyn shoot her father an exasperated look. Whether it was for his awkwardness or for even trying to keep up the pretense she did not know. They were a bit separated from the camp here, but not overmuch. Oberyn seemed to be speaking fairly freely, though, so she supposed he was not afraid of being overheard? Sometimes Lyarra was a little confused on his stance as far as keeping the pregnancy quiet. He’d been very stern about it when they’d first discussed it and she’d agreed to tell only her father and Gwyn from amongst the Northern Camp. Yet now the list of Dornish who knew of her pregnancy included Oberyn himself, Ser Ullwyk, Ser Arron, and Ser Daemon kept expanding. 

“Hearty and  _ heavy _ are different things.” Oberyn said at the same time Gwyn’s voice came from behind them.

“I’ve been cooking Northern things because I didn’t want to upset anyone’s stomach.”

“In that case, perhaps a little less horseradish?” Lord Stark offered, nodding towards the venison roast and prompting a snort from the Prince sitting on Lyarra’s other side as her father sat next to her as well.

“Allow me to speak for all of my people, Lady Gwyn, when I say that what you’ve done since we crossed the neck to make bland Northern food more palatable is much appreciated. The venison is  _ fine _ the way it is.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Gwyn smiled prettily and sat down with her own plate, causing Oberyn to look back at where his had been left unattended, look at her, sigh and then shake his head before turning to Lyarra again as Lord Stark went on.

“There’s nothing wrong with good, plain, food.”

“ _ Plain _ being the operative word.”

“Did you like the food at River Run, better?” Gwyn asked instead, ignoring the two men. “The fish and the greens and the fruit?”

“Aye, a bit, but they used too much butter and heavy cream.” Lyarra replied gratefully. “I feel best when it’s not full meals. Just cheese and toast, or fresh fruit.”

“Eat little, but eat often.” Oberyn replied, his expression twisting between agreement and old pain and Lyarra felt a well of that familiar grief and, unthinkingly, reached for his hand.

A moment’s surprise flickered in his dark eyes, and then Oberyn claimed hers and pressed it between his own, sliding even more closely together until they were pressed from shoulder to hip. To Lyarra’s surprise he took possession of her plate, then passed Gwyn his own.

“Please find the Princess something lighter.”

Gwyn’s lips turned up in an impressed little nod. Ghost, who’d settled in next to Lyarra’s feet with a freshly caught hare of impressive size, looked up and snuffled at Gwyn’s skirt hem in gratitude when the contents of Oberyn’s plate joined the hare on the ground. Lyarra watched as her father nearly said something about the waste, then paused, then looked over and chuckled.

“Yes.” Oberyn allowed wryly and Lyarra found herself laughing at the world of meaning in that one word’s tone. He smiled back. “Was she much disappointed that I was undisturbed by the millipedes?” 

“Impressed, actually, and curious. No-one else would pick them up even after it was pointed out that the red ones are poisonous but the black ones just pinch.”

“Venomous.” Oberyn corrected. “Poison is delivered by man’s intervention, a toxin is produced by nature, and venom is bitten or injected somehow by an insect or animal.”

“A distinction sometimes blurred in your family, no doubt.” Lyarra’s father commented wryly and Oberyn smiled back.

“You do say the  _ sweetest _ things.”  

Lyarra was hiding a giggle behind her hand and trying to make amends to her father’s disgruntled expression over the way his goodson was batting his eyes at him when Gwyn returned. She carried a fresh trencher with slices of a green apple, a wedge of soft white cheese, and thinly sliced dark bread freshly toasted. Half of the cherry pie remained, however, and Lyarra no longer found herself intimidated by the idea of it. 

 

* * *

 

Oberyn tried to usher Lyarra into bed that night, intending to talk there. Lyarra’s listless appetite reminded him too much of Elia. The difference was that Rhaegar and Aerys and their damned fleet of Maesters all had shoved food down his sister’s throat in great amounts. All of the Dragons had been determined to protect the child she carried over her. All that strategy had resulted in was his sister being so sick that everything she ate came back up, and she was all but bedridden with constant nausea. Light as Elia was, she’d been thinner  _ after _ she’d delivered each of her babes than at the beginning of her pregnancies.

Oberyn was determined to be wiser. Ned Stark had greeted the news that he was to be a grandfather with an expression that started out in blank shock, moved to a suggestion that Oberyn was about to have to act to prevent himself from coming to bodily harm, and settled on a kind of intensely worried delight. A worried delight that had led to him drawing Oberyn aside and having a short, terse, conversation into him that had turned again into an argument about the fact he would not tell Lyarra her mother’s name.

Now Oberyn had other worries. If  _ his _ children treated their mothers well in the womb, it bore no comment on the wombs themselves. The Uller family was not known for having many daughters, but when they did they were strong and hearty women. Ellaria had been such and had no real problems in her pregnancies. Light nausea and fainting a handful of times aside, neither of those things was truly dangerous. Ned Stark, however, had unbent from his secrecy enough to confess that Lyarra’s mother had died birthing her.

_ “How?” _ Oberyn had demanded, only to be given a blank look. 

_ “I told you, in childbed.” _

_ “Yes, but of a fever, did she rupture and bleed out? If I’m to help Lyarra I need specifics!” _ Oberyn had demanded.  _ “Was it just the labor, or was the pregnancy difficult?” _

_ “I - I’m not sure, I was off at war.” _ Was the Quiet Wolf’s pained reply.  _ “I do not believe it was easy, though.” _

Oberyn accounted taking Lyarra that knowledge immediately both one of his largest mistakes and a small triumph. The later because he’d been  _ honest _ and he knew enough of women to know that was essential. The former because you did not take an overwrought young pregnant woman such news when she was already deeply upset. Lyarra had been beside herself the night Edmure Tully had earned himself a far worse fate than he’d ended up receiving. Oberyn still wanted some answer for that insult, though he was reluctantly aware that he could not yet have it if he wanted to keep the board intact for whatever play Doran led them to make on it.

Ah well, there was always time for Lyarra’s revenge later. One quest at a time, as it were. Even Oberyn had his limits.

“Oberyn, I’m fine sitting up.” She protested and he allowed her to take the chair and passed her a shawl to drape over her shoulders as she sat there wearing a plain shift and a frown. 

“As you will, darling, but I want you to rest.” He settled himself in the other folding chair, the leather of the thing conformed to his body after years of use during his travels. “Your body will be your best guide during your pregnancy. If you are tired, you need to rest, if you find a food makes you ill, do not eat it. If you are dizzy, lie down.”

“You sound like a midwife.”

“You’ll find my family loves to jape about such, but I  _ have _ delivered half of my daughters and intend to deliver ours as well.”

Lyarra’s shock was enough to put a smile on his face and he watched her deal with that thought slowly, going quiet as she often did. After a few minutes of visibly considering it, she looked back up at him. Her expression could only be called quizzical.

“Truly?”

“Truly.” He agreed. “When Lia was to be born I went first to Sunspear’s maester, and when that did not satisfy me, apprenticed myself to the best midwife in the Shadow City for three moons. While I will have a maester at the ready, in case something I cannot handle happens, I am confident I can deliver our daughter myself.”

“I - actually, I would prefer that to a stranger.” Lyarra paused, about to say something, and then smiling slightly. “I would say all women would prefer such, but then I think on a few of the marriages I have seen.”

Oberyn laughed at the sally and nodded, feeling something in him unwind until he watched and felt Lyarra’s tense unease return. The mixture of shame and sadness that had settled over her since Riverrun was no piddling opponent to face. Oberyn, however, refused to be daunted by it, or by his worst enemy in this instance: his pride.

“I believe I should clarify what I meant when I said I had fucked up.”

“I don’t know, it’s a fairly graphic,  _ literal _ description of the situation.”

Oberyn felt himself grin at the sharp words as his wife’s spirit sparked and shined through the gray fog of her unhappiness. He didn’t necessarily  _ like _ having her angry with him. It was easier to deal with than her refusal to engage, however. A fight he could handle, or the warmth of making up afterward. Avoidance was like trying to attack water with a blade; you’d make plenty of cuts in your opponent but very little difference in the outcome of the battle.

“True.” Oberyn breathed out. “May I ask you to describe, in detail, why you are upset and angry?”

“You don’t know?”

“While I’ve been accused of being a sorcerer, I cannot actually read the minds and souls of others.” 

She shot him a look, but, after a few moments of tugging idly at the trailing edges of the soft knitted shawl, she gave in.

“I was the bastard of Winterfell, Your Grace, I grew up having to listen as Lady Stark constantly reminded me I could never truly be part of my own family. I do not enjoy being mocked.”

Oberyn sat forward, his temper flaring as he moved to say something. He wanted to reassure her that any who did so to  _ his _ wife would not live long to regret it. Edmure Tully was an exception, and  _ she’d _ specifically asked that the foolish fish be spared. Not that he intended to let him get away with it for eternity. Maybe five or so years, then he’d come up with something suitably humiliating and painful. Lyarra preempted his attempt to reassure her anyway when she continued to speak. 

“I also…” 

Lyarra stopped and pressed her lips together, her pale cheeks stained red by her temper and the sense of disappointment and hurt now roiling between them. Oberyn watched as her hands began to twist the great ruby ring upon her finger. Then is mind went to the beautifully carved weirwood snake that sat on his own finger. 

She’d  _ made _ his wedding ring herself, honoring a Rhoynish custom she’d never heard of before. Lyarra had spent hours varnishing it in a complicated process that required many coats and made the ring as durable as iron. Something she’d done not only out of practicality, but out of a genuine desire to make him a ring he could wear with pride and that symbolized both of them. He’d chosen a ruby ring for himself, the Red Viper of Dorne, the size of the gem for his pride, and guessed at the size of her hand with far less thought than he should. It was an illustration of how they’d approached their marriage that he would do well to remember.

“Oberyn, I feel…  _ wrong _ about it all now. What we shared was wonderful. I hadn’t expected to find joy in the marriage bed. I had expected it would not be awful, and hoped I might enjoy it, but I never expected it to be  _ joyful _ . I didn’t expect joy at all.” Lyarra struggled to explain, her gray eyes luminous in the light of the candle branch he’d lit on the folding table set up in the tent and the red coals of the brazier. “You - you made everything perfect, and then I found out that it  _ wasn’t _ private, it wasn’t special, it was - it was just another of Theon’s dirty jests.”

He cared for her. Oberyn had known this before, but it hit him hard in the chest that moment, squeezing his heart like the iron bands of some of the torturous toys that lived in the dungeons of Sunspear; relics of a bygone era and an implicit threat should the Martells be crossed. Lyarra was nothing like any of the women in his life. She was quiet, innocent, and could be shy where the lovers of his youth were bold and experienced. Where Ellaria was all the sweetness of honey and fine, aged wine - knowledgeable and deep - Lyarra was a  _ song _ . She changed quickly, soared to heights, surprised you with her depth, and was oddly illusive when you tried to grasp it with more than your mind.

Oberyn had realized he was falling in love with her. He knew the feeling well. It was just that, after all this time in his life, he’d thought he was well-acquainted with love in all of its forms. He’d known the fierce love for his siblings, the family of his birth. He treasured the love of a father for his children. Ellaria had been the love of his life, of the life he  _ wanted _ to lead. 

Lyarra, he reflected, was love unwanted and unasked for. Not something he would have chosen, but something precious nonetheless. A gift, he reflected, for the Gods could have bound him as easily to a woman who’d never have accepted him and he never would have more than held in duty and in bitter acceptance that she was all he  _ could _ have. Either way, he’d hurt her, this girl he was slowly tipping over the precipice into love with. Worse, he’d disappointed her and managed to lessen himself in her eyes and his own as a byproduct.

Somewhere from his past the exasperated Doran of his youth, fresh in his knighthood and feared in the lists and by all who crossed him, rolled his eyes as he dragged his little brother from some other self-made mishap. 

_ “This, brother, is what happens when you do not  _ think _ before you act!” _

Oberyn had no humility where his many gifts were concerned, and he had not been gifted with modesty in any form. In the time between being that monstrous young fellow from his youth and growing into a man he  _ had _ learned how to apologize. He even, very rarely, employed that knowledge well. Now, he realized, was the time to take a deep breath, brace himself, and do so.

“Lyarra.” Oberyn slid out of his chair and onto his knees before his wife, gathering her small white hands in his own and pressing his lips to her fingers. “I am a wretched, arrogant ass who deserves all of your anger, but I am  _ sorry _ .”

Lyarra sniffed and swallowed, but her words weren’t gentle conciliation.

“I should grind your face into the dirt in the practice yard. Why didn’t you  _ tell me _ ?”

“In truth? An equal mix of assuming you would simply know and the casual arrogance of being more than twice your age.” 

She looked at him harshly and he rose, drawing her to her feet as well. Now he was taller than her again. There were limited situations where he did not loom over his wife. Most involved a staircase, and he did not have one available.

“If I’m old enough to carry your child, then I am old enough to trust!”

“You have the right of it.” Oberyn admitted, then braced himself for more anger. “But you also must admit, you are  _ young _ , Lyarra. There are many things you don’t know, and that you have not learned.”

“How am I to learn anything if I am not taught? What could  _ possibly _ be accomplished by keeping me in ignorance of  _ my own life _ ?”

Oberyn winced.

“There is a reason that I allow Doran to handle all long-term planning in our family, and it is not because he is Prince of Dorne and I am  _ a _ prince of Dorne?”

“You are a right pain in the arse some days.”

Oberyn had to physically bite his tongue to keep from making the joke that sprang to mind. Judging from Lyarra’s narrowed eyes, she saw him do it. He smiled sweetly in response and watched as she huffed out a breath, looked away, and then looked back at him with those earnest gray eyes glowing in the low light.

“I forgive you.”

“You say that so  _ simply _ .” He marveled. 

“Forgiveness is a simple thing.” Lyarra replied, shrugging and hesitantly taking a step towards him. Oberyn was quick to join her, taking her in his arms and breathing out a sigh of relief as she began to fiddle with and straighten his tunic and coat, smoothing her hands down where the cloth split over his chest. “Simple things are not always  _ easy _ . Gwyn once told me that  _ mining _ is the simplest thing in the world; you dig a hole and pull things out of the dirt and rock. The complicated part is keeping it all from crushing you in the attempt, drowning when you breach an underground river, or running out of air because you forgot ventilation.”

“An apt analogy.” Oberyn breathed out. “I have no talent for forgiveness nor much urge to explore it.”

“Howland Reed might disagree.”

“I did not  _ forgive _ the man. I accepted that he had a reasonable reason to be murderously wroth due to the misinformation and confusion of war. A stay of execution isn’t forgiveness; it’s  _ justice _ . I advised the Lord of the Neck to stay home and avoid me if possible, and am happy to say it likely will be possible until the end of our days… and all the light has gone out of your eyes. What did I say? You cannot possibly be so fond of Lord Reed.”

“He is father’s friend, but no, I am not so fond of him as that.” Lyarra sighed and leaned forward, resting her head on his chest. “Mostly it is just that he is  _ of _ the North. He’s part of  _ home _ , and I am leaving that behind. What will I do if I never see a summer snow again?”

“Rejoice at having found a better climate?” Oberyn offered dryly and got smacked in the chest for it, grinning as he could  _ feel _ things returning to the fragile, short-lived new normal he’d known with her. “Still… though I should hesitate to say it in my own interest… You forgive too easily, darling.”

“As my husband aren’t you honor bound as a knight and a southron to move heavy things for my helpless, dainty, ladylike self?” Her sarcasm was delightful. “You can carry my grudges for me.”

“It would be my pleasure.” He agreed and leaned in for a kiss, humming in delight when she returned it.

“ _ Oberyn _ .”

He grinned at the soft tone of warning in her voice, but he could  _ feel _ the lust pooling between them. Just as she could surely feel other things between them, he thought wryly. Keeping one hand at the small of her back he cupped her chin with the other and started another kiss. She nipped his lip in warning and he returned the favor, sliding his tongue over hers until they were tangled in each others’ arms, sharing breath.

“I am not going to be a spectacle.” Lyarra warned, breathless from the kiss when she pulled back.

“I do so love a challenge.” The Red Viper murmured and led his Princess to bed.

 

***

* * *

 

Lyarra pulled back from her husband, torn between wanting him and how she’d missed the closeness he offered her and the new worries she held of shaming herself. Unable to quite articulate the mess her emotions were in she concentrated on something a little more tangible. In this case the tangible thing was exasperation at her spouse.

“Oberyn, already?” She pulled back from the kiss to breathe her question out against his chin, torn between looking down, doing something about it he’d find pleasant, and her lingering embarrassment and hesitancy.

“ _ Already _ , she says.” Her husband scoffed, rubbing the bulge of his arousal gently against the crease of her hip. “Woman, we left Riverrun more than a  _ sennight _ ago. Do you know what I’ve discovered in that time?”

Lyarra blushed and looked at him suspiciously, but he just nudged her towards their shared bed. She allowed it, curious about what he would say next. She had no doubt he would explain. Whatever else was said about her husband, he  _ did _ love the sound of his own voice. Perhaps that was for the best. She felt rather talked-out for the evening, but also didn’t feel ready to make love despite desperately wanting to. 

“A sennight is no long time to go without bedding.” Lyarra argued. “Many honest husbands go far longer on campaign.”

Oberyn got her into the bed and under the sheet and light blanket he insisted on using despite the warmth of the night, allowing her to keep her shift. He took her shawl and hung it neatly over a chair back before stripping out of his own clothing, pausing to mutter as he worked on the the ties of his smallclothes. 

“You will recall I mentioned once that I had no release between the time I was Marked and the time I met you, and then only limited relief by my own hand between our meeting and our wedding night?”

Lyarra nodded, blushing at his blunt language, and then blew out the candles before her husband got any further in disrobing. It felt silly. She’d seen him naked the first time they’d lain together. He’d insisted on it before he even would make her his wife properly. At that moment, however, everything felt a little new and a little raw again. Besides, she was uselessly afraid of being seen as a silhouette through the tent walls even though she knew it was impossible; the walls of Oberyn’s pavillion were too dark and too thick for that.

“Lyarra.”

She ignored the chiding in his voice as he slid into bed. When she felt him reach for her she reached back, though, struggling to settle into his arms as comfortably as she had the last time they’d made love. It helped when he gathered her against him slowly, settling on his side to face her and not immediately pressing them together. His hands rubbed warmly across her back and she lost herself in the pleasure of kissing him. A few moments later and he’d captured one of her hands. Leading it down his belly Lyarra found herself smiling a little, embarrassed but aroused by their kissing and a little amused at her husband’s impatience.

To her surprise he led her hand down past where his member was arced up against his belly. Instead he nudged her hand to where his balls hung beneath it. There were few parts of her husband she hadn’t already explored with his encouragement, so she cupped him there, carefully exploring with her fingers. She wasn’t surprised by the low, stifled moan he gave, but she was surprised by the mix of pleasure and slight pain that drifted through their bond. She immediately pulled her hand back, but he caught her wrist and held her hand against his hip rather than letting her pull away entirely.

“No, darling, it felt wonderful, but  _ gently _ please.” He urged against her hair, but he didn’t try and force her hand back.

The tent’s window flaps were tied up and the candles were out. It was pitch-black inside and she couldn’t see him at all. She did feel his lips brush over her cheekbone as he slid his hands up her arms and urged her onto her back, and she spread her legs very willingly as she allowed him to kneel there. Absentmindedly she petted his hip as they changed positions, and she leaned up for a kiss as he held himself over her on his knees and one hand.

“I’m a lustful man, Lyarra.” He drifted kisses across her nose and cheekbones as he spoke, then down over her neck, making her shiver as he nuzzled the skin there and pushed the neck of her shift off her shoulder with his nose to kiss her there as well. “Those who are polite call me  _ vigorous _ , and the prudish and rude name me licentious, wanton, lascivious, and dissipated. Mayhaps they’re not wrong, but I see no shame in it.”

“I’ve noticed.” Lyarra bit her lips to keep herself from calling out when he tugged the ties at the front of her shift’s neck open with his teeth, scraping them gently across the dip between her sore breasts.

“My seed is strong, Lyarra.” He chuckled and leaned down and she felt a well of a different kind of love bubble up and expand between them, pushing aside his lust and hers as he left her breasts to nuzzle at her belly, reverently dropping a kiss between her hip bones. “As our little one can attest.”

Lyarra felt herself smile and reached up to run a hand through his hair.

“I haven’t lacked a ready outlet for my needs since I was your age, and even when I was but a greenboy I was more than capable of easing myself as many times as needed with my hands. Even _ honorable  _ men on campaign who won’t seek other company do the same, I assure you.” Her husband’s chuckle was full of self-deprecation as he pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. Unsatisfied Lyarra drew him back down and several minutes were lost to tangled tongues and bitten lips. “So imagine my surprise when I discover that I’m in  _ pain  _ when I’m denied?”

_ “Oh.” _ Lyarra breathed against his lips and he nipped her before going to attack her neck. 

Lyarra brought both her hands between his legs then, this time of her own choice.  _ Quietly _ her husband panted out his approval, thrusting into the hand curled around his member. Lyarra kept her other hand gentle, carefully feeling her way around his body and admitting that he  _ did _ feel heavy and tight in her hands. His need was certainly vibrating, almost  _ aching _ through their bond.

“Lady Myria said not to believe men when they tell you that.” Lyarra confessed in a rough whisper, her own breath coming more quickly as she kissed his own neck and then sunk her teeth gently into his collarbone the way he’d shown her he liked during their first week wed. He arched his neck and she obliged him by sucking a mark to the surface. “She said that men just say that to make a woman feel guilty for not wanting them.”

“ _ Some _ men.” Oberyn corrected, his voice tense as he moved her hands aside and then settled his weight more firmly onto her as he pulled her shift away and cast it aside off of the bed. “You have every right to deny me, my darling, but don’t wonder why I’m  _ eager _ when the deprivation is over. I’m a  _ passionate _ man with a beautiful wife who will one day admit she’s every bit as libidinous as I am, and the Gods have deemed I’ll have no other. Why  _ shouldn’t _ I want you as often as you’ll have me, and more besides?”

Lyarra breathed through her nose, stifling a cry of unexpected pleasure as his fingers slipped between her own legs, carding through the soft dark hair and then sliding through her lips to toy with what was hidden there. She curled a leg over his hip to bring him closer, suddenly surprised by how wet she was. There was no trying to deny it. She’d missed him. Perhaps even more, she’d missed  _ this _ . She struggled for a moment and he drew back. He rested his hand resting on her thigh and his voice was as concerned as his soul, pressed tight against hers through the Marks on their wrists, even though he sounded slightly strangled as he stopped to speak.

“Lyarra, are you well?”

“Maybe I  _ am _ wanton.” Lyarra confessed. “Lady Stark says bastards are naturally unchaste, brought about by sin as they are.”

“I’ve no use for a chaste wife, so allow me to thank the Gods who make you so.” Oberyn replied, his tone scornful before it became a low, soothing purr. “Do you wish to stop and speak of this now?”

“ _ No.” _

“Then allow me to distract you.”

“Gods,  _ please. _ ” Lyarra softened her mewl to a whisper through iron control and refusal to make a mockery of what they shared, but it was difficult not to cry out her pleasure when his hand slid between them again. 

This time it was to guide himself home, and he muffled his own cry of pleasure against her breasts. What followed was wonderful. He saw to her pleasure even as he took his, and his generosity and caring in bed was what she’d grown to expect from her husband. When they’d finished, some incalculable time later, she curled up on her side and he curled around behind her. Lyarra was drowsy and felt that he was the same, but she had no illusions about her husband’s intentions for sleep. He was already half-hard against the curve of her ass only a few moments after spending and the hand not resting against her belly, petting their unborn child, was gently fondling one of her slightly aching breasts. How he kept his touch light enough to soothe and arouse without hurting she didn’t know. Even her bindings ached by the time she removed them in the evening.

“May I make an observation, wife?” Oberyn asked against her ear, still using that low, throbbing whisper she was sure he’d perfected in a half-hundred dangerous encounters with other men’s wives and lovers. She nodded as he lifted the long sheet of her hair - undoubtedly tangled now - out of the way again to drape over the pillows. “Lady Catelyn Stark spends an inordinate amount of time decrying unchastity in women  _ despite _ having birthed five children, yes?”

Lyarra stifled a snort at that observation, and shook her head.

“She would argue that the marriage bed is a duty.”

“Yes, but if it is  _ only _ a duty, mayhaps that explains both why your father is so dour  _ and _ why she is so afraid of a woman she’s never met. One I might add that your father has not seen in nigh on fifteen years.” The Red Viper observed with the kind of level logic he rarely ventured forth in bed. “If she sees what  _ we _ share with such joy as naught but a duty to hold still and  _ endure _ , can you blame your father for yearning for whatever Dornishwoman gave his youth passion and love? The woman who also gave him  _ you _ . Or, for that matter, for Lady Stark seething in jealousy of what that lady allowed herself pleasure in? After all, self-denial on that scale can’t  _ possibly _ be good for one’s mental wellbeing. Just look at the woman’s sister.”

It was an absolutely terrible comment, but Lyarra found herself shaking with repressed laughter. It was a nice distraction from the horror that was his decision to talk about her father and his wife while in bed with  _ her _ . 

“That’s  _ awful _ , Oberyn.”

“Indeed, it actually makes me feel sorry for Lord Stark. Something I abhor to do, you know.”

Rolling over on her belly Lyarra stuffed her face into the pillow to muffle her laughter. It was just as well that she had. The move also muffled her squeal of surprise as her husband blanketed her back with his own and began to enthusiastically signal his eagerness to return to their previous activities.

 

* * *

 

***

“You look well this morning, Lya.”

“I  _ feel _ well this morning, Father.”

Ned Stark had no intention of  _ thinking _ of the reason why his daughter’s cheeks were rosy or she was currently meeting anyone who dared stare at her overlong with a look of pigheaded pride. He was just, honestly, very grateful to know that the Viper’s asinine behavior had been repaired somewhat. Knowing Lyarra was with child was difficult, and it left him worrying that she shared an age with Lyanna. It also, however, left him with the knowledge that she was  _ safe _ .

House Martell might hiss and bare their fangs at  _ him _ and his name, but Ned knew that one thing was as true about the Princes of Dorne as was true about the Starks. The  _ Pack _ mattered. House Martell would have kept her relatively safe no matter what, to one degree or another, as a hostage-by-marriage. As the mother of one of their own, however, they would do what they could to make her welcome and to keep her in comfort and happiness. 

More than that, Ned had watched the affection growing between his daughter and the man she’d wed with confused  _ relief _ . He did not understand how she could like the dangerous man or his questionable sense of honor, but he was glad that she did. He  _ wanted _ her to find love, and to do it without the desperation that had driven Lyanna and so many others to their ends. Seeing the man begin to return that affection, begin to show his daughter the care she deserved, was a balm on his soul and gave him hope that she would be more than  _ safe _ in Sunspear even after her secret was revealed.

His daughter smiled at him warmly as she petted Ash upon her soft, gray nose and offered the horse an apple. They’d stopped to rest and water the horses near where the two tributary branches of the Blackwater Rush came together and the ladies had come out of the wheelhouse to stretch their legs, and Lya had made a straight line for her horse and the man riding it. As Prince Oberyn had still not come to a good understanding with his borrowed mount and seemed to dislike the sturdy nature of a good northern saddle he’d found he actually  _ preferred _ Lyarra’s lighter, but tall and mare and the lighter saddle that Lyarra had favored since Benjen had gifted her with it.

Ned had nearly lost his composure when he’d seen the saddle. Built for a rider more intent on grace and acrobatics than needing a solid platform and heavy reinforcement so he could swing a two-handed broadsword in battle, it was unique. It still had the same basic shape of a Northern saddle, but all of its features had been streamlined. Someone had also, with great care, embellished the saddle. The leather was wrought in racing direwolves, and the small pommel and the brace of the cantle were chased in silver wrought with winter roses.

It had been the last thing Rickard Stark had commissioned to gift to his only daughter. Ned hadn’t seen it as more than a sketch from an artisan in his father’s solar. He’d never learned if it was ever delivered or even made. It was all he could do to keep himself stoic when he’d watched Benjen produce the saddle as he departed from Winterfell and gift it to his niece. No matter how he’d loved her, Ned had to remember that it was  _ Benjen _ with whom Lyanna Stark had been closest. 

“Indeed, we are  _ both _ quite well, thank you for asking.” 

Ned shot a wry look at where Oberyn Martell had sidled up behind him. He didn’t refuse the wineskin that the man passed him. While there wasn’t a touch of sweat on the Dornishman’s face Ned could feel a small river of it moving down his back beneath his clothing and armor. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Lady Myria nodding at Ser Deziel Dalt and sharing a smile with him at the sight of Lyarra brushing a stray bit of road dust off of the prince’s red stained leathers.  _ Good _ , he thought, and relaxed a bit more.

“How far do we have to King’s Landing, Father?” Lyarra asked and Ned took a breath and ignored the way the Viper’s expression hardened.

“Less than a fortnight, more than sennight.” Ned replied. “Much depends on the roads. They’re uncertain in the rain until we get to the Gold Road.”

“If King Robert was going to spend six million gold dragons on anything, the roads would have been a better investment than ale and whores.” Gwyn observed as she wandered up with one of the wooden bowls Lyarra had made her perched in her hands. “Honeyed almonds?”

“ _ That’s _ what you snuck out with Ser Arron to buy in that last village.” Ned chuckled and gathered up a handful. He tried not to think about the rest of her comment. How that girl always found out such things was beyond  _ him _ . 

“I saw the orchard and just  _ needed _ them.” Lyarra added sheepishly and took some as well, leaving the Viper to go last. “Gwyn went out and got a bushel and bought some fresh honey to roast them in.”

“The wheelhouse officially smells better than it did when it reeked of wet direwolf this morning.” Gwyn snorted.

“It’s not Ghost’s fault that Nymeria knocked her in the river last night when they were hunting!”

“It’s not Nymeria’s fault that Ghost’s big and clumsy.” Arya yelled from off where she was engaged in a fencing match against one of the more tolerant Northern guardsmen involving hastily procured sticks. 

“You’re just mad because Ghost’s outgrowing her!” Lyarra shot back, grinning, as she popped the last of her handful of almonds into her mouth and then reached for more, her expression embarrassed. “I have to stop eating these things…”

“You do not.” 

The Lord of Winterfell, the Red Viper of Dorne, the Lady Arya Stark, and a young Lady of no importance from the Westerlands all looked at each other as they said the same thing at the same time. Then Gwyn shrugged and had to duck her head when Ser Deziel wandered over and reached overtop of her to get some almonds himself.

“Many thanks, Lady Gwyn!” 

“How’s Patches?” Gwyn asked instead and Ser Deziel smiled.

“I’m in your debt my lady, you’ve a fine horse.” 

“Why  _ are _ you riding the lady’s rouncey, Ser Deziel?” Ned inquired, finding himself able to relax around the Dornish more than he had in days as he nodded slightly at Jory to continue going about the usual business of resting and watering their mounts and checking the baggage wains. 

“My horse threw a shoe this morning. It’s been seen to, but it’s favoring that foot and I refuse to return the mount to your stable lame when I’ve no longer a need of it.” The Knight of Lemonwood explained, then turned and looked speculatively at Gwyn. “She’s as good a horse as I’ve ridden, my lady. Patches is calm as still waters, strong as a coarser, and rides well. I have one question.”

Gwyn grinned like a well-fed house cat and Ned felt himself smiling as well. 

“I can guess your question.” Lyarra grinned. “Where in all the Hells did she find a Rouncey that ambles like a palfrey?”

“You actually get amblers cropping up randomly in rounceys in the Westerlands a lot, Ser Deziel.” Lady Gwyn said after only a moment’s pause, surprising Ned. “The land’s so hilly most good horses will find a way to jump a fence if they’ve a mind to, so there’s a lot of sneaky neighbor stallions who get around. A little ingenuity about where you put your horse to pasture, if you’re not Quality, will get you a much better horse a few years down the line. You can hardly help that your mare’s been covered if it was  _ their _ stallion that jumped the fence, can you?”

Oberyn laughed at that and Ned chuckled as well. Most of his pleasure was dedicated to the fact that Gwyn was  _ talking _ about her past at all. It was dribs and drabs. He could  _ see _ the girl think and hesitate before she spoke. Coupled with the knowledge that, with  _ gentle _ prompting, she’d spoken to the Prince of Amory Lorch’s need to face a just death? Ned felt something unwind within him that was part relief for the child he’d guarded for two years and part savage satisfaction at knowing one of Tywin Lannister’s nastier creatures was not long for the world.

“Good to know, Lady Gwyn, but I was actually going to ask who  _ chose _ your mare.” Ser Deziel corrected gently.

“I’ve asked her that as well!” Lyarra laughed and nudged her friend with an elbow. “You’re not a horrid rider like you were when you came to us, Gwyn, but you still don’t know anything about horseflesh.”

Ned watched as the blonde girl stood very still. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Lady Walda happily wandering about giving out honey roasted almonds to others who might want some. Then he saw her frown and begin to drift over as she took in Gwyn’s direction. Lyarra moved to put a hand on Gwyn’s shoulder when Gwyn let out a breath and surprised him by speaking. Her voice was steady, but he could see the almonds in the the bowl trembling because her hands shook underneath.

“Sandor Clegane chose Patches for me.”

_ “The Hound?” _ The Dornish Knight and the Dornish Prince said at once, while Lyarra just looked startled. “You know the Hound?”

“Aye, he was one of the two guards who rode north to the Crossing with Lady Gwyn.” Ned allowed, frowning in memory. “I misliked that Lady Genna chose him as your guard from House Lannister then. Especially considering the guard from House Parren looked old enough to be  _ my _ father. You say he chose your  _ horse _ ?”

“He wasn’t sent.” Gwyn breathed out and her hands steadied, but her eyes looked away.

“Then however did you come to know him, Gwyn?” Lyarra asked, coaxing and warm as she very deliberately stepped on the toes of Ser Deziel’s boot so he would back up.

While the knight started a bit at having a princess stamp on his foot, he obligingly gave the girl some air. Ned, however, rested a hand lightly on Gwyn’s shoulder. She jumped a little and then settled back into his grip. He resisted the urge to give the child a hug, as he would have Arya or Lyarra. Instead his heart was racing in his chest as he wondered just how much this child was about to speak of on the side of the road by a river in the borderlands between the Reach, Crowlands, and Riverlands.

“He likes my baked chicken.” Gwyn’s next words were truthful, but a tiny fraction of the truth, Ned knew. He was surprised when she went on. “I - when my great-aunt, the Lady Parren, induced Lord Parren to get me fostered in the North and take me from the Rock he only agreed to handle the letters and transfer control of my dowry. Lady Parren had to send one of her men to ride with me, and even he would only go as far as Lannisport.”

“You had to get from the Rock to Lannisport without a guard.” Oberyn Martell was puffing up, like an adder preparing to strike. “ _ Alone _ , as a girl of ten?”

“I would have, but Sandor Clegane helped me.” 

“Why?” Ned wanted to know, suddenly worried.

“He likes my fried chicken too.” Gwyn smirked just the tiniest bit as she answered, looking back at them with her stormy blue eyes dark and steady even as the almonds rattled in the bowl. “I didn’t read then, so I showed Sandor my letter. He read it and said he’d take me, and he took the letter to Ser Kevan and got leave to take the journey. I rode pillion with him to Lannisport. Lady Parren had sent me gold for a horse so when we got to the city he helped me buy Patches. Then we met Ser Audrey Hill and we started riding North.”

“And he did you no harm, my Lady?” Ser Deziel was still frowning in worry. It was clear that the dedicated and chivalrous knight was uncomfortable with the idea of  _ any _ lady near the Lannister’s second most infamous dog.

“None.” Gwyn replied firmly, looking up with a thin smile. “Who better than a dog to understand that it’s unpleasant to be kicked?”  
“You kick even the most loyal dog enough and it will bite you.” Ned listened to the Viper observe speculatively and felt a last puzzle piece in Gwyn’s story as _he_ knew it slot into place in his mind.

“I’ve never owned a dog, much less kicked one.” 

“Tell me, Lady Gwyn, are the Lannisters of the Rock particularly kind to the residents of  _ their _ kennels?”

“I think, Your Grace, that would depend entirely on the dog.” Gwyn replied meaningfully and then Lady Walda finished wandering up, nibbling on almonds as she went and looking far better with her fine lemon blonde hair in rag curls around her shoulders and a refitted dress of mint green swishing about her ankles as she walked. 

“Good day.” Lady Walda gave an appropriate curtsey and smiled around. “Is everything alright, Lady Gwen?”

“Quite.” Gwyn said, then looked down at her bowl. “I think I need to roast more almonds, though.”

“I can help.” Walda volunteered. “It makes the wheelhouse smell so much better!”

“Oh, for the Gods’ sake!” Lyarra complained and Ned found himself laughing softly as he took his leave of the ladies to go check on the camp.

Behind him, Ned heard the Viper do the same and Ser Deziel do likewise. Ser Arron, who’d likely taken a moment to answer nature’s call after being on guard duty all morning, returned to the ladies and they went back to the wheelhouse. As he turned, Ned caught sight of a black lioness that Gwyn had embroidered on the shoulder of her otherwise plain burgundy cotton gown. Walking up beside his lord, Jory Cassel noticed where Ned’s eyes landed and chuckled.

“House Parren’s forgotten little lioness is finding her courage, isn’t she, my Lord?”

“Aye, Jory, I’d say she is.” Ned felt a wash of fatherly pride for the child. 

“I wonder what’ll happen when she realizes her teeth are sharp?” Jory chuckled, pleased with his joke and not seeing anything beyond the humor in it.

Ned felt a mixture of pride and foreboding, however. He’d seen before what Gwyn would do, and the lengths she would go to for someone she loved. In Winterfell, where the risks to Lyarra were only sharp, mocking words heaped upon Gwyn’s friend for being a Snow, it was not so bad. Ned was even a bit proud of his fosterling for bearing punishment from Lady Stark or creeping about to deliver some petty vengeance in the name of her friend. 

In King’s Landing things would be far more dangerous; he would need to talk to the Viper about it. Ned knew he was not gifted in politics and had no urge to get tangled up in dirty, honorless, Southron games. In this at least the Red Viper would be better able to protect  _ all _ of Ned’s girls in the capital than he would. Still, he found that there was only one thing he could say in response to Jory’s jape.

“How could she do anything but?” Ned shot back, his eyebrows rising. “She’s been raised by wolves.”

Hearing one of their solemn lord’s rare jokes lightened the mood of the entire Northern party. Amongst the Dornish, seeing their Prince relaxing around his young soulmate did the same. In the background, however, gears were turning and the Gods were listening.

  
  



	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Westerland's culture, and the value of math in plotting the overthrow of any government.

**Chapter 19 - 297 A.C.**

 

"Riders approaching!"

 

They were three days out of King's Landing. Oberyn's temper had grown uglier the nearer they got to the cursed place, and though he attempted to mitigate it somewhat, he knew he was not pleasant company. As such he was pleased when a torrential downpour descended upon them. It forced them to make camp and move off the road as it stood by the Blackwater Rush. There was too much risk of flooding.

 

Instead they were camped on Merchant's Tor. The high, rocky hill jutted up like a dunce's cap with the peak lopped off, and was surrounded by a landscape of crumbled boulders that tumbled down the sides. The secure area's top had long been cleared of boulders and sharp rock rubble by the traveling merchants who used it as a defensible camp, and finding it empty when the rain had been no more than a drizzle had been a pleasant boon.

 

"Merchants or a House?" Oberyn asked as he looked up from the book he was reading.

 

His pavilion was dry and warmed nicely by the brazier glowing on its brick platform. Rain pattered heavily against the tent, but good care and excellent construction meant that it did not get through either the fly tied off above it or the tent itself. He had also ordered the servants to go to the trouble of putting down the elevated flooring. Now his was the only tent with flooring that would not grow sodden with the rain.

 

As a result, Oberyn's pavilion was currently popular. While the ladies had the wheelhouse, he'd wanted Lyarra's company. With Lyarra had come the rest of the ladies. Currently his wife was curled against his chest, having intended to read but fallen into the grips of an unexpected nap instead. She'd been slightly shy about joining him on the bed in company, but lack of furniture had won out over her diffidence and now he had a warm armful of beautiful woman to keep him company while he reread Ser Tolyn the Storm's _ Ballad of Nevermore _ .

 

There was something very nice about being surrounded by a room full of contented ladies. It made Oberyn yearn further for his daughters, but it was a very homely feeling nonetheless. Gwyn sat on the floor with Walda and Lady Myria. They were perched on cushions taken from the Wheelhouse. On a smooth plank they had a few parchment scraps out and pen and ink and were carefully and meticulously designing and working out the patterning for a new gown for the Frey girl.

 

Two days before they'd passed a cloth merchant on his way from King's Landing to Deep Den. Oberyn found it charming and no small relief how careful his young wife was with her funds. It was no surprise to see tightfistedness in a Frey or a girl like Gwyn, who was of limited wealth and no great family, but in a Lord Paramount's daughter, it was amusing. Especially as they all seemed to have a rather inflated idea of what the cost of things were, and as such were even more cautious with every copper. He was beginning to suspect that Lady Jynessa had scared his young wife with exaggerated tales thinking that she might be a spendthrift youth. While he more than appreciated the gesture, he had a feeling it wasn't accurate for this young girl.

 

It had been decided that Walda must have an advance on her allowance as one of Princess Lyarra's ladies in waiting so that she might improve her wardrobe. It, like Lyarra's own, would have to be augmented considerably to deal with the Dornish climate. It also had to be improved so that Walda was no embarrassment to the household in King's Landing. The latter of these two things was more pressing, given time. Gwyn and Walda and Lyarra were likely to spend a good deal of their time in the Red Keep tucked away in Oberyn's guest solar sewing. Given her condition, he was more than happy with that knowledge. Sewing was  _ safe _ .

 

Oberyn was holding out on telling any of the girl's that he'd gotten Walda no small dowry when he'd left the Twins. Stevron Frey  _ owed _ him, and the girl's father and mother were dead of the Plague. Getting her due from the family in terms of her inheritance was only just, and a threat to demand a look at the account books of House Frey had been enough to loosen the Frey family pursestrings. Having one plot discovered was enough for the new Lord Frey. The chance that some shenanigans with the taxes due to the Crown or Lord Tully might be found as well was too much risk for Stevron Frey to take.

 

"We're not sure, Your Grace." Ser Ulwyk pulled a face. "Oberyn, they're wearing boiled leathers and their gear is decent, but they've got no house colors and their banner is unfamiliar. They're carrying pikes and short swords right out of a Lannister army."

 

"How close are they, and what's their banner?" Oberyn sat up, dislodging Lyarra and waking her.

 

"Hm?" Lyarra's sleepy protest earned a hand upon her shoulder as he nudged her more fully onto the pillows.

 

"Go back to sleep, darling, it's nothing."

 

Lady Jynessa, who'd been idly plucking at her lyre, narrowed her eyes. Arya, who was sitting beside her and glaring down at the handkerchief she was having to restitch, looked up almost hopefully.

 

"Do you think they're bandits?"

 

"I am sure that bandits would not directly approach so armed a camp, Lady Arya." Lady Jynessa held her hand out for the work, only to begin pulling stitches out. "Lady Arya, if you put stitches such as these in a wounded knight's arm, he'll never hold a sword straight again."

 

Arya grumbled, but consented to redo the work. Oberyn just aimed a wink at the canny old lady. Jynessa Blackmont smiled back. She'd  _ finally _ found a way to get Lady Arya to practice her sewing, it seemed.

 

"If they're not bandits, maybe they're  _ hunting _ bandits." Arya wasn't ready to give up a chance at bloody distraction. "Do you think they're sellswords?"

 

"What's their banner?" Oberyn asked instead, swinging his feet down and reaching for his boots as Lyarra rolled over and fell asleep again, attesting to how tired their babe was making her.

 

"Some kind of black tent over a man colored gray on a white field."

 

"Wait…" Gwyn Parren looked up from her work with wide eyes, putting down her stick of charcoal. "Wait, a gray  _ man _ under a  _ tent _ ?"

 

"A black triangle, at least." Ser Ulwyk raised his eyebrows at the girl, but she was already standing.

 

"Was it a gray giant sleeping under a black mountain?" The girl asked urgently.

 

"It could be, yes."

 

"Do you know them?" Oberyn wanted to know. "I memorized the banner of every Westerlands house long ago. Has this one been newly created since the Plague decimated so many Houses?"

 

Gwyn stood perfectly still. She didn't even seem to be breathing. Oberyn found it an ill portent and reached to buckle his sword at his waist only to jump slightly when Lyarra's friend scrambled to her feet with none of the grace the young girl usually showed in front of Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria.

 

"This is no house, it's the  _ Guild _ ." She answered urgently, shoving her feet into her own ankle boots.

 

"What guild?"

 

" _The_ _Guild_." She replied with unhelpful haste. "They _never_ leave home."

 

Then she was ducking past the Heir to Hellholt before he could get a grip on her and rushing out into the storm having wrapped herself in her cloak. Cursing, the knight followed her and Oberyn managed to grab his own cloak, pulling the hood up and mostly avoiding a soaking as he followed the girl out as well. Behind him he heard the other ladies expressing their surprise and Lyarra waking up again in confusion over where he'd gone and what was going on. Catching Ser Arron by the elbow he nodded backwards.

 

"Keep my princess inside." He frowned at the rain pelting down upon them from a leaden sky. "This is no weather for her to be out in."

 

Ser Arron sighed at the difficult task he'd been assigned, but nodded dutifully. Oberyn kept walking over the slick rock and thick mud of the camp. As he was dodging between guards, keeping well distant of irritable, picketed horses, Oberyn noted that it was going to be all seven kinds of hell to get the wains and the wheelhouse down the next morning. If they were delayed an extra day he would not complain, though, would he?

 

He found Lady Gwyn standing beside Lord Stark and several northern guards where the stone and earthen ramp that led up to the top of the tor stood. He barely noted that the guards were all in place and the archers watchful. That was to be expected, not praised, in anyone in his household or under his command. A group of seven riders, now unmounted, were leading what were either small draft horses or very heavy, hairy black ponies up the ramp.

 

"'Lo the Camp!" A scratchy baritone called up deeply tainted with a heavy Westerland's accent. "I see you carry a Northern banner!"

 

Oberyn's own banner had been weighed down by the rain. Though the dye on the silk wouldn't run in any weather, the lighter cloth couldn't stand up to the water sluicing down upon it. The Martell House banner was plastered to its pole.

 

"Lord Eddard Stark, Warden of the North asks your business!" Jory Cassel yelled from the Wolf Lord's side.

 

"Master Tollen Hillson, Guildmaster of the Westerlands Miners' Guild and Company request your permission to share the tor!" Came the same scratchy baritone. "We've fewer swords than you, an' there's been a lot o' trouble on the Gold Road with brigands roundabouts!"

 

"Master Tollen?" Gwyn's voice was tentative, but strangely happy and the figure in the center of the group stepped forward, pushing the deep hood of a rough brown woolen cloak back.

 

"Lady -  _ no _ ." A face was revealed, deeply seamed and lined with age and with pores swelled large and black from decades of exposure to stone dust. Large blue-green eyes looked out from beneath two great bushy brows like white caterpillars, and a surprised grin split a white beard to reveal a mouthful of age-stained and crooked teeth. "This  _ cannot _ be Ser Galen's baby girl. The last time I saw you, you were playing with a rag doll in your grandfather's warehouse. Why, you're too  _ pretty _ to be that naughty ragamuffin scaring all the little boys with snakes and spiders!"

 

As Lord Stark stared down at the guildmaster in surprise, Oberyn watched Gwyn's face. Once before he'd seen her transform from the self-possessed, careful, sharp-tongued lady she appeared to be into the child she should have been. That had been up a tree, gleefully playing with a green tree snake. Now, as the Viper watched, the girl's pretty features smoothed out out further and her smile was wide and uncomplicated; a child again.

 

"My Lord, Master Tollen is the best engineer the Guild has seen in three generations. He got his mastery at  _ nineteen _ ." Lady Gwyn offered as an introduction, before swallowing and adding. "And he was my grandfather's dearest friend."

 

"Only honest merchant I ever did know." The man agreed, and then gave a surprisingly fluid bow for one that must have seen seventy years. "An honor to be in your comp'ny, Lord Stark."

 

"I am always honored to meet an honest man." Lord Stark's expression was stoic but his gray eyes curious. "And Lady Gwyn was fostered for two years with my lady wife. She is dear to my family, and a friend of hers is very welcome. Please, join our camp - if you have no objections."

 

Oberyn smirked as Lord Stark recalled that he was not the highest ranking member of the party at the last minute.

 

"House Martell is pleased to welcome any friends of the Princess Lyarra's lady-in-waiting as well."

 

A surprised rush of noise came from the guildmaster's guards as they began to lead their ponies forward. Master Tollen's turquoise eyes caught the light of the spluttering cooking fires going in the leeward sides of some boulders and his eyes widened as he looked over Oberyn's face. He prepared for whatever greeting he was about to get, and was surprised at the one he received; a low bow, and the following words:

 

"Prince Oberyn Martell, are you not?" He asked as he rose. "You're the right age, or you look to be near it."

 

"I am, and you are a well-informed man." Oberyn nodded in reply.

 

"Ah, no, merely an' old one." The engineer stepped forward, walking up to stand beside Gwyn for a moment and smile at her before turning respectfully to the Prince and Lord Paramount. He didn't, Oberyn noted, simper or seek favor. This elevated member of the smallfolk stood proud amidst royalty. "I was at the Rock four-and-twenty years ago to talk with Ser Gerion about a collapse in the tunnels beneath the keep when the Princess of Dorne arrived with you an' your sister."

 

The sudden rush of memory took his breath away. Oberyn pushed away thoughts of being an annoyed boy. His first view of Lannister pride and Lannister cruelty had been emblazoned in his memory. He'd never thought of it as something others had seen and noted; it had been but an insult to his family and a passing, irritating trip north to the boy he was at the time. He'd simply been pleased not to be saddled with a betrothal, and that the pretty, useless boy that was Jaime Lannister hadn't been given the treasure that was his sister.

 

"That was a long time ago." Oberyn managed as Lord Stark led them all towards his tent.

 

"Aye, my beard was as yellow as this lass' hair then. You were also a might shorter, Your Grace."

 

Lady Gwyn, who'd begun to look nervous, smiled again at that.

 

"I was." Oberyn allowed, but the hissing serpent in his breast demanded he continue. "Tell me, Master Tollen, what do you remember of my sister?"

 

"Not much, Prince Oberyn, I was just watching from a side hall's window while I waited for the Lannisters to approve of my model so I could put in an order for the support beams." The old man allowed as they walked into the spacious, plain pavilion that Lord Stark kept and out of the rain. "I wouldn't have ranked inclusion in any such meeting."

 

Oberyn took in yet another surprise as Lady Gwyn took the man's cloak. The rest of his guards had been sent to tend to their mounts and then set up their own tents. He, however, stood before them all and Oberyn could not help but think that the man looked nothing like any Guildmaster he'd ever seen.

 

Dorne had guilds. Oberyn had yet to see a place that did not. Craftsmen, like all men, needed some organization. In Dorne, as he'd seen in the Crowlands and elsewhere, guilds spent some of their time setting prices and negotiating with lords. Most of the time, however, the men who ran the guilds were highly placed merchants who'd bought into their position and used it to garner more funds. The purpose of the guild was as much to assure that no-one got into that trade without paying the dues that supported the guild and the lifestyle of the men who ran it as it was to protect and negotiate for the men doing the actual work.

 

The guildmasters were always social climbing sycophants. Oberyn was used to seeing men sweating in heavy velvets and too many layers of richly painted silk. They would come to Sunspear either with gifts to try and win favor, or with elaborate claims of malfeasance from some competing guild and demands for justice. Always the men themselves were first looking to advance their position and power over that of whoever they were supposed to represent.

 

Master Tollen Hillson wore plain clothing, though it was well-tended and of decent quality. He wore a long brown tunic of wool beneath hardened leather and good quality steel chainmail. The long mail shirt, the steel greaves over his shins, and the broad, stabbing short sword at his waist were all familiar enough to leave Oberyn's temper a seething mass of anger. Though he wore no red, it was the same armor he'd seen on every Lannister footsoldier he'd ever come across.

 

Still… there was no pretension to him. Everything he wore, everything about him was plain and serviceable. The only decoration on his person at all was a round medallion. Carved from a single piece of agate in layers of white, gray, and black, it depicted a gray giant with a pick axe resting across its chest sleeping beneath a black mountain on a white field. Held in a golden collar and suspended from a chain of thick gold links, Oberyn took it to be the man's badge of office.

 

"The Princess Elia looked to be a sweet girl, though. I remember she was mannerly when Lord Tywin was so cold and didn't bow to your mother." He went on, and his expression was grave and sincere. "I'm sorry for your loss. I lost my daughter the same way during the Greyjoy Rebellion."

 

The vengeful creature in Oberyn's breast subsided somewhat. It was not satisfied to hear of another's loss. It was, however, willing to relax at the man's apparent honesty. The smallfolk were hardly given a choice, though this man spoke and held himself like no peasant Oberyn had ever met before. Not that he'd interacted with many smallfolk who weren't mercenaries…

 

"Those who love war have never had to clean up after it." Ned Stark added heavily and then nodded towards a side table. "You fought in the Rebellion?"

 

"Oh, most of the Guild did." The old man smiled as Gwyn moved over and began to pour ale. "You're too kind, my lord, I thank you. Riding in the rain at my age is a thirsty business; half drowned or not."

 

"I think my bones age at twice the rate as the rest of me."

 

"There must be something strange in the northern air that makes one old and dour before their time." Oberyn scoffed. "I am your elder by five years, but you make me feel  _ young _ some days, Lord Stark."

 

"You make me feel old every time you open your mouth, so I am willing to call it even."

 

Oberyn couldn't help the bark of laughter at the man's ill-temper and willingness to insult him back for once. He would have continued more in that vein had he not been distracted. He'd followed out of curiosity, after all, and was hoping it would be somewhat answered by watching Gwyn and the Guildmaster interact. What had gotten her so excited about the Miners' Guild? 

Was it a chance to see a friend of her family's after being absent so long? Oberyn doubted it, for she'd been surprised to see the man. Besides, she'd evidenced no hint that there was any kin in the world she would claim to care for.

 

"-should have kept better track of you, when your grandfather died. I just assumed your father'd be around to look after you." Tollen was saying to Gwyn, brushing a stray bit of golden hair behind her ear and frowning down at her through his snowy beard. "Yorin Lannister was a good man, and he'd be ashamed to know all what happened with his grandchildren. Not often you see the Quality with a pick in their hands, and he worked for every bent copper he earned in his life. Not a lazy bone in his body."

 

"Grandfather was always proud to be your friend." Gwyn agreed, smiling still. "He said you were a wizard with numbers. He'd have never been able to get into the Guild if you hadn't coached him on his sums at night."

 

"Everyone needs a helping hand, now and again." The old man brushed that off. "His father throwing him out o' the manse in Lannisport was the making of him. If you don't  _ work _ for something, you don't value it, and your grandfather  _ worked _ . You're working hard too, I hope?"

 

Gwyn Parren startled him again by holding out her hands. They were spotted with old shiny burn scars and calloused. Oberyn knew any number of otherwise excellent Dornish ladies who'd have sat on such hands before allowing another to see them.

 

"I thought so!" The man beamed. "No way a  _ true _ knight like your father would produce a lazy daughter, and your grandfather would rise from his grave if he thought you were slackin' off. What're you doing with a Princess of Dorne, though?"

 

"Princess Lyarra Martell used to be Lyarra Snow, of Winterfell. She is Lord Stark's daughter."

 

"I have that honor." Lord Stark nodded and the Master returned the expression.

 

"She's my friend. She invited me to be one of her ladies and I accepted." Gwyn went on, her tone fierce as she stressed her next words strangely, as though speaking in code. Oberyn felt his instincts rise up and clamor. "We do not forget our friends."

 

"No, we do not." The old man agreed in the same tone, but his eyes asked a question of the girl that her darker blue gaze seemed to answer.

 

"What are you doing way out here, Master Tollen?" Gwyn asked. "The Guild never leaves the Westerlands. Not unless there's war."

 

Oberyn's spine snapped straight and beside him, Lord Stark did the same.

 

"I have to agree. I can't say the last time the Guild sent a Guildmaster out past the borders unless we'd been called up." Tollen agreed mildly. "I guess I can say I've lived to see just about everything."

 

"Just about?"

 

" _ Just about _ ." He agreed with a small half-smile and sharp eyes at the girl before looking up at the two grown men in the room, prince and lord alike. "I'm much obliged for your hospitality, though. It's a relief to get to spend one safe night on the road without risk of anything. We've a long way to get back to Lannisport."

 

"It wouldn't be right to leave your party vulnerable for no reason."

 

"Still, we appreciate your kindness. Not all lords are known for such." The man went on and nodded at Oberyn. "Take your brother, Prince Doran. I've never heard tell of a Prince doing what he did for the smallfolk. That's the the good sort o' surprise. The older I get the more I think I should be used to unpleasant surprises, as I've had enough of 'em. Lately I've found that when they don't come to me, I've got to go to them."

 

"Such as in King's Landing?" Oberyn guessed, curious enough that he couldn't help tapping his fingers upon his sword belt as he watched Gwyn's eyes brighten again at the man's words.

 

"Place still smells of shit, lies, and the smallfolk's blood." The white-haired Westerlander snorted roughly and took another pull of his ale.

 

"Here's hoping the rain clears it out before we get there." Lord Stark scowled and the man shook his head.

 

"Take it from an engineer with a certain expertise on the subject. What sewers they've got are already badly done. Now they'll just flood and back up."

 

"I was afraid of that."

 

"Mayhaps we'll give the roads a day or two to dry out before we proceed." Oberyn offered a good excuse to delay the inevitable and watched as Lord Stark grappled with his duty and sense of honor versus his absolute lack of desire to be anywhere near the Red Keep.

 

It had taken weeks for him to fully notice it, but Oberyn knew now that he wasn't the only one who hated to go there. He'd thought, perhaps, it was a dislike for merely the politics of the capital that had kept Lord Stark from his friend. Now he felt like something of an idiot for not seeing the truth. He was not the only one who'd lost kin in that cursed place. A fact he'd known about, of course, but only recently come to care about. Yes, he cared only for Lyarra’s sake, but that was still caring.

 

"That would be a good idea, if you'll forgive me for saying so, Your Grace." The old man said seriously. "There's been another riot just a sennight before we left."

 

" _ Another _ riot?"

 

"What about, perchance?" Oberyn asked over Stark's question.

 

"At the root of it is the food shortages and inflation. The brigands have all but closed off everything coming out of the Kingswood, nothing comes south from Stokeworth, storms off of Pentos are wrecking shipping, and even the Gold Road's not safe now." Tollen pulled a face. "Hungry people do  _ stupid _ ,  _ rotten _ things, and they'd just done one when I left."

 

"What happened?" This time Ned Stark shot Oberyn a cross look and stepped forward.

 

"A mob armed with cudgels broke into the Great Sept of Baelor. They raided the Sept's vaults."

 

Oberyn drew up in shock, and as little as he held any religion, his childhood lessons rebelled at the idea.

 

"The Usurper has let it get so far?"

 

Stark shot him a glare for using the title in his presence.

 

" _ Worse _ ." Tollen went on, his expression grim. "They broke into the crypts too. They couldn't get into the Targaryen crypts in the time they had. The dragons sealed their urns deep with lead and good mortared stone, but they could tear apart statues for their plating... and I hate to say it but the little prince and princess the Plague took weren't dragons and the Baratheon's bury their dead the normal way."

 

" _ Gods _ ." Ned Stark's eyes closed in horror. "How bad was it?"

 

"The mob tore the little stone bodies to pieces pulling their finery and jewels off."

 

Oberyn felt sick even as some tiny corner of his soul, long burned to bitter ash, rejoiced. His sister's babes were shattered and broken, but their bones at least rested with her in her sarcophagus. Now, as they'd been broken and destroyed by Plague in life, the Usurper's daughter and son had been desecrated in death. The cyclical nature of it was fitting, if too disgusting to be satisfying.

 

"What did the King do?" Oberyn's question fell heavily into the room.

 

"King Robert had ridden out with a large party to hunt the brigands a fortnight before." Tollen said gravely, his eyes sharp and harshly bright in the light of the candles Gwyn was silently lighting as dust fell outside the tent, deepening the storm's gloom further. "The Queen sent out the Gold Cloaks and the Lannister men that were in the city. What mob hadn't fled was slaughtered, then it  _ really _ got started."

 

"It seemed that the Queen had it in her head that there's a proper place for everyone, and everyone ought to  _ stay _ in their place. Merchants in what she decided was the Merchant's Quarter, the poor in Fleabottom, this or that group here or there. It didn't really matter since I don't think there was much rhyme or reason to it to begin with. What mattered was that she had her swordsmen prowling through the city running through or hanging anyone caught out of their place."

 

"Where was the Hand of the King?" Ned demanded.

 

"The Lord Hand had gone with a large guard to Duskendale to bring a big supply train with food into the city to try and get things under control."

 

"I  _ have _ to find Robert."

 

Oberyn was so caught in staring at Hillson that he'd all but forgotten the Quiet Wolf's presence. Turning to look at the man, he saw how pallid he'd grown beneath his beard, and how determined his eyes. For all that one part of his mind was even now weighing the account to immediately put to paper and send to Doran he had to admit to respecting the man. Whatever else Ned Stark did that infuriated Oberyn, the man did his duty.

 

"The King rode back into the Red Keep just as we'd left it." The old man shook his head. "I can't say what he'll do or not, but he's back in King's Landing."

 

"Where was Lord Tywin?"

 

Gwyn's voice startled Oberyn and he saw it do the same to Lord Stark. He'd become so engrossed in the old man's tale that he'd almost forgotten she was present. Her dark eyes were avid, though. The girl had continued her habit of listening closely. Her question sparked a curiosity in him as well.

 

"I would think that Lord Tywin would be in the Westerlands now, as I've heard they've problems of their own given how many Houses fell to the Plague and the lack of able-bodied knights to deal with keeping their roads safe."

 

"The roads in the Westerlands aren't so bad as those in the Reach and Riverlands, Your Grace."

 

Gwyn, to Oberyn's shock, didn't even look at him as he spoke. Her eyes stayed fixed on Tollen. The old man stared right back, his expression approving.

 

"At first, it was Lord Twyin who had control of things." Tollen explained in a cold, level voice. "He organized the goldcloaks and put them under Ser Barristan's guidance, for he'd been left in the capital with the Queen and the Crown Prince. Lord Tywin's health isn't what it one was, however, and he took a fall from his horse not long after setting out. Barristan the Bold rushed him back, and the Queen ordered the Lord Commander to stay and guard them. Then  _ she _ began giving orders."

 

"You're not surprised he fell from his horse." Gwyn observed.

 

"No, I can't say he looked well enough to ride in full plate when I saw him two days before the riot."

 

"You didn't want to talk to Ser Kevan at the Rock?"

 

"Some questions need to be asked  _ in person _ ." The Guildmaster tapped his badge of office. "I've a responsibility to my people, you know, and Winter's just around the corner. People are getting nervous."

 

"How did your questions go?" She asked, her expression a mix of worry and eyes that were all avid indigo shadows in the dim light inside the tent.

 

Lord Stark raised his eyebrows at Oberyn, who just silently watched the exchange between the girl and the old man.

 

"Questions went fine, it was the answers that were a little lean. I can't say I'm unhappy with them, you understand, just not quite  _ satisfied _ ."

 

"It's always a terrible thing, not to hear enough."

 

"Ah, at my age you take it for granted."

 

"I was always told to help my elders, and my ears are sharp, Master Tollen." Gwyn's grin was all even white teeth and full lips and in the half-light the flickering candles, cast shadows leaving her blue eyes leonine and her pale hair gleaming in a golden mane around her face. "And, well, you know how ladies  _ gossip _ ."

 

The old man offered a thin smile and then turned to Lord Stark.

 

"Speaking of, I think little ears have heard enough for one night." The old man bowed again. "Seeing as your people've done so well by all the smallfolk, Prince Oberyn, Lord Stark, I'm at your service. If there's anything I can tell you, all I know of the goings on in King's Landing is yours."

 

"I need to help with supper anyhow." Gwyn agreed, the crisp, noble Westerlands accent Oberyn was used to hearing from her faltering into a similar, but distinct cadence halfway between the longer tones of the Guildmaster and that normal haughty crispness.

 

Oberyn dismissed the girl with instructions to check on his wife. Then he settled into a chair along with the guildmaster and Lord Stark to begin finding out everything he could of the situation. If it was too dangerous, he would escort Lyarra with a heavy guard to Duskendale. There she could wait out the visit in some other arrangement. Oberyn would wait until his uncle's ship arrived, if it hadn't already, and send it from King's Landing to Duskendale to await him as he rode back to the capital.

 

He wasn't about to forget the strange exchanges between Lady Gwyn and the Guildmaster, however, and had every intention of finding out the meaning behind them as soon as he could.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra woke up from a strange dream disconcerted. She'd had dreams of hunting with Ghost before, or of being her friend through her nightly prowls. Usually they involved the excitement of chasing down deer with Nymeria. Once there'd been a battle with a badger. This time, however, she woke from dreaming of following Gwyn around camp as she fixed a large breakfast for the group of strange men who'd come in from a guild in the Westerlands the night before.

 

She dreamed she stood at Gwyn's side, guarding her friend as was proper as Lyarra's Lord Father and Gwyn bid Master Tollen goodbye before the sun even tried to rise behind the sullen clouds still weeping overhead. It was very disconcerting to wake from a dream about standing beside Gwyn to see the same friend in the same clothes tiptoeing forward across the flooring of the tent towards you. Lyarra sat up quickly enough to make herself dizzy and she accidentally elbowed the prone man next to her in the chest.

 

"Lyarra?" Oberyn sat up. "Are you ill?"

 

"No, I-," How to explain the wolf dreams? Better not to. "Gwyn?"

 

"Wake up, I've got something I need to show you!" Gwyn insisted urgently and then immediately turned and began lighting candles.

 

"Can it wait until I have trousers?" Oberyn drawled, sitting up and displaying his bare chest and his bare feet and lower legs as he swung around under the covers.

 

"Just wrap a sheet around your waist, Prince Oberyn."

The sleep that had clung to her husband's face after he'd complained to her of spending half the night awake trying and failing to extract any information about goings on in the Westerlands from the guild party vanished.

 

"Gwyn,  _ really _ ?"

 

Lyarra couldn't believe it. Her friend was quite shameless when it was just them, but she usually was quite shy when Oberyn decided to be awful. Well, awful or  _ nude _ . Especially if he was being both at the same time.

 

" _ Yes _ !"

 

"What do you have?" Oberyn asked, standing and pulling a sheet free to indeed wrap around his waist before sitting again as Lyarra accepted the robe that Gwyn passed her.

 

Oberyn didn't own a robe. Or, rather, he owned more formal robes of the kind favored for court dress in Dorne. He didn't own a decent linen-lined wool dressing robe like Lyarra did for cold evenings and getting from a warm bath through a cold room and into a warm bed.

 

"Is that a book?" Lyarra squinted in the light of the candles, then felt her shock just start expanding into a kind of newborn happiness. "Gwyn, are you happy about a  _ book _ ?"

 

"You haven't converted me to your pedantic ways, Lyarra, this is _the_ _Ledger_."

 

"Not  _ a _ ledger?" Oberyn now seemed caught between amused and annoyed at being so awoken, then he paused and scowled. "Wait. Why was I not woken for the guild party leaving-."

 

"They just ate and said goodbye." Gwyn shook her head. "That's not important. Master Tollen said all he could say to you. Then he left me  _ this _ ."

 

Gwyn was holding an enormous tome bound in dark gray leather. The size of a paving stone and twice as thick, she had to struggle to carry it a bit because of its bulk. As it was, she set the book on the chest by Oberyn and Lyarra's bed and then gestured to it as though it had magical powers.

 

"And a ledger is important because?" Oberyn drawled, but is black eyes were alight with curiosity.

 

Gwyn bit her lip nervously but Lyarra noticed in surprise that her hands didn't shake as she sat down beside the chest and rested one of her hands on the leather of the book's bindings.

 

"In the Westerlands, there aren't miners'  _ guilds _ . There is  _ the _ Miner's Guild, and there's only the one." Gwyn explained, her face sharp and harsh and excited; a combination of too little sleep and some great inner storm that left the already high strung girl walking a tightrope of emotion. "Every miner in the Westerlands belongs to it."

 

" _ Every _ miner?" Lyarra blinked in surprise.

 

The North had fewer guilds than the other kingdoms. Even she knew that was unusual, though. Guilds usually covered small geographic areas.

 

"Yes."

 

"How long has this Guild existed?" Oberyn wanted to know.

 

"Five thousand years."

 

The silence that followed was deep.

 

"Impossible." Oberyn broke it, scoffing, leaning forward to look at the ledger.

 

Gwyn almost giddly turned it around and opened it for him, turning the sturdy parchment pages delicately.

 

"It's  _ true _ . Five thousand years. It's not quite the first guild in Westeros, but it's now the oldest one. All of its contemporaries exist only as whispered legends and tales."

 

"No guild lasts more than a century and a half, Gwyn, the corruption and competition destroys them." Oberyn insisted.

 

"The Miners' Guild is  _ not _ corrupt. It never has been."

 

"And how have they avoided that universal disease, please tell me?"

 

"About every twenty years, some district guild master or local guild leader or shift manager or somesuch does something corrupt." Gwyn's expression was oddly serene. "The guild members always find out. When they do, they get the corrupt guild member and whoever else was involved in the corruption, whoever bribed or threatened them, and they take them deep down into a played out mine."

 

Lyarra felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and watched as Ghost padded into the tent and slowly came over to slide her nose beneath Lyarra's limp hand on the bed sheets. Lyarra petted her direwolf friend, but her attention was elsewhere. The eerie pleasure in her friend's voice was unusually bloodthirsty in tone even by Gwyn's standards.

 

"Then they find deep, dry shafts big enough for each person to have their own. They put them in the shaft, in a nice little nook." Gwyn smiled and it was all fang and claw. "Then they brick it up and leave them there to talk over all their mistakes with the Stranger, down in the dark where he's most at home."

 

Oberyn had looked up from the book at that, his own expression one of shock sliding into fascination.

 

"And they do this to  _ anyone _ ?"

 

"If they're cheating the guild, yes." Gwyn agreed, her blue eyes as black as Lyarra's husband's in the candlelight. " _ Anyone _ ."

 

"What is this in the front of the ledger?" Oberyn asked, gesturing and turning the pages back to show simple, but bold script at the top of a page of numbered lines.

 

"The One-Hundred Rules of Safe Mining." Gwyn's grin became almost proud. "Those are the Rules the miners live and work by. They're carved into the westerly wall of every Guild Hall in the Westerlands, and every miner's community has a Guild Hall."

 

Lyarra leaned over and quickly glanced over the page. She saw a few things that just made sense. Number seven was  _ 'Never go alone into a mine'. _ Number twenty was  _ 'Teach your children their sums so they cannot be cheated'. _ Number one, however, was odd.

_ ‘Never Forget’. _

 

"Never forget what?" Lyarra asked, more to herself than not, but Gwyn answered anyway in a low, almost reverent voice.

 

Lyarra looked up and caught her friend's eyes and realized that Gwyn, who she'd accepted as her friend without a past because she didn't need one to know her quality, finally had a story to tell.

 

"Five thousand years ago, the Westerlands was just a bunch of angry little warring kingdoms and petty kings." Gwyn went on. "There was no organization and no safety, and half the Westerlands was made up of thralls and the miners were all but slaves. The  _ good _ lords were the ones that used tokens, and tokens meant living in shit and feeding your children prayers and air."

 

"Tokens?" Oberyn prompted expertly.

 

"If you were lucky and weren't a thrall or a slave captured in a nasty little war, then you were a smallfolk miner. You didn't have any rights and you might dig up gold all day, but you'd never even see a single copper. Instead the lords had these wooden coins. If you were a miner, you could only use  _ those _ coins with your lord and you'd have to use them to buy everything you needed. Food, clothing, pay for whatever shack you lived in - you had to give your lord pay tokens to get it."

 

"Which meant you could never leave." Lyarra concluded. "Your money was no good anywhere else."

 

" _ Worse _ ." Gwyn shook her head. "A good miner takes years to become so, and is  _ valuable _ . Houses do compete for them a bit now. They just weren't treated like it back then. So even if you managed to get away, you were still trapped. Remember, they earned no real pay. Instead they got the tokens, and the lords decided how much those tokens were worth. The way it went, it didn't matter if you loaded sixteen tons of ore, at the end of the day you'd take your tokens in to buy bread for your family and you'd leave with the bread, but you'd still owe your lord tokens because it was all set up so that it cost more to survive than you were paid."

 

"And you can't leave unless you've paid off your debts to your lord, even if you're  _ willing _ to leave with only the clothes on your back, you still owe him." Oberyn observed.

 

"And if you did try to leave, well, that's a great excuse for war with your neighbor." Gwyn agreed pertly. "After all, he's stealing your miners who owe you, isn't he? The Westerlands is _all_ _about_ paying debts."

 

"That's  _ monstrous _ !" Lyarra burst out, suddenly infuriated. "That's no way for a lord to treat his people. It's a lord's  _ duty _ to protect his smallfolk. To see that they're fed and safe and have shelter in the winter and the hard times."

 

Lyarra felt herself flush as she saw Oberyn giving her with a small, approving, amused smirk and Gwyn beaming at her.

 

"We don't have Starks in the Westerlands. But we did have Good Ty Hill."

 

"Good Ty Hill," Gwyn told them quietly with a crooked little smile. "Was some lord's bastard. Everyone's forgotten which one, if they ever knew, but the point is that his older half-brother didn't like how much everyone liked  _ him _ . Unsurprisingly, this lord threw his bastard brother into his iron mine when he was only a little boy. He probably thought he'd die soon, like all his other workers did."

 

"The mines Ty were in were deep and dark and dug by thralls. They caved in a lot and nobody had a plan for them. The lord forgot about his brother, his slaves kept dying, and he just kept raiding his neighbor's villages or rounding up his shepherds and throwing them down there in the dark too when he ran low on thralls in the mines. Time went on and he figured that Ty Hill was dead.”

 

“But he wasn't." Oberyn prompted again.

 

"He was  _ digging _ ." Gwyn's eyes were alight with her story. "He organized the other thralls and they dug a tunnel up out of the mine and into the keep above, and one night while everyone was asleep, they  _ slaughtered _ the lord and all his soldiers and took the keep."

 

"Now, every other lord in the Westerlands figured that this had happened before. A man killed a lord and took his seat? It wasn't _remarkable_ and nobody paid much mind to it in the Westerlands five-thousand years ago, but Good Ty Hill wasn't the sort of man to do what everyone else did. Instead, he _cast_ _lots_ and left one of the thralls in charge of the castle for a year. The next year, they were to cast lots _again_ for the next leader while he went out and found another mine and did the same thing he’d done to his half-brother.”

 

"And it worked until the new lord decided he didn't want to cast lots?" Oberyn snorted and Gwyn grinned at him, fierce and bright.

 

"In thirty years of war only  _ five _ men Ty asked to cast lots tried to make themselves one of the Quality." Gwyn stated, soft and sweet as death in your sleep.

 

Oberyn regarded her with raised black eyebrows and Gwyn just grew smug.

 

"You've heard of Loreon the Lion?"

 

"Loreon Lannister was the first true Lannister King of the Rock, as Lann the Clever is often considered no more than a legend like Bran the Builder is dismissed as being." Lyarra finished, beginning to fall into the excitement of the story, of the history she'd never heard before. "Didn't he fight a twenty year war against Morgan Banefort to become king?"

 

"Yes, but there's more to it than that, though it's not a story the lords like to tell outside the Westerlands." Gwyn snorted, a habit picked up from Lyarra, and moved forward to press her shoulder against Lyarra's legs as Ghost moved off to curl up in the corner and watch the proceedings from the shadows. The white shewolf's eyes burned like coals in the dark.

 

"I, for one, would love to hear it  _ all _ ." Oberyn murmured, having paged through the book. "Tell me first, where it says  _ 'Miners' Rights' _ here… these are the rights the Guild insists the miners must have, yes?"

 

"All Miners have a right to a fair wage, a decent day's work and to be asked to work no more than that, working conditions as safe as possible, representation by the guild, and a fair and honest guild to represent them." Gwyn agreed, quoting it from memory.

 

"Your grandfather was in the guild?"

 

"Yes, his father got him squired to a rich noble knight but something happened." Gwyn explained after only the slightest hitch in her breath, and with clasping her hands in her lap. Lyarra slid down and wrapped an arm around her friend's shoulders in support. "When he was sent back to Lannisport in disgrace, great-grandfather disowned his fourth son, though he was only three-and-ten. Grandfather had some bad times and went to the Miners' Guild. They let him sign up and gave him a chance. He worked at that for ten years and saved his money. Some friends, like Master Tollen, pooled their savings and gave him a loan. He bought his first ship and started trading in Northern wool down in the Reach during winter, and Reach linen up in the North during summer. He was almost the only cloth merchant trading with the North on the west coast, at the time."

 

"Thank you, Gwyn." Oberyn's voice was gentle, before adding in a kind of playful, dangerous hunger, "Please, continue to tell us of this history. I find it  _ fascinating _ ."

 

Gwyn grinned fiercely and went on.

 

"Loreon the Lion wanted to be King of all the the Westerlands, but it wasn't working. He'd allied with Castamere, but he'd been bogged down in war for fifteen years with the Hooded King and could do no more than a long stalemate. Meanwhile, Good Ty Hill had taken a lot of land, but his people weren't trained soldiers and were dying. He wanted to  _ save _ miners, not spill their blood in pointless wars."

 

"One day, Ty got a message from King Loreon saying he wanted to meet. The message said that when Ty had taken a castle to free the slaves from its mine, he'd also released some noble hostages. One of them was King Loreon's only sister, who'd been a captive for a long time. The note said a Lannister always paid their debts, and asked that he meet with him so that King Loreon could give him the bounty for his sister's life and freedom; her weight in gold and jewels."

 

" _ Well _ ," Gwyn's eyes shined as she went on, "Good Ty Hill wrote back that he was a miner. He had a castle's weight in gold and didn’t need a king to add to it, but he was happy that King Loreon's sister was free. If he wanted to pay his debt he should treat his miners well, as  _ all _ people ought to be treated. King Loreon asked to meet so that they could discuss this, for if that's the debt he must pay he would pay it if he but knew how."

 

"They did meet, and a deal was struck." Gwyn's voice dropped low. "By now Ty Hill had a great army, but no real knowledge of how to use or train it. What he  _ did _ have was luck and numbers aplenty. King Loreon had trained warriors, but not enough to really win against the Hooded King. So Good Ty Hill sat down with King Loreon and he wrote the Miner's Rights down and King Loreon swore on a weirwood tree in the eyes of the Old Gods that he would support and protect the miners and their rights in the Westerlands and wherever his realm reached. Then Ty Hill named him Friend of the Guild and brought all his people out to fight."

  
  


"By that point, Loreon the Lion had fought for seventeen years against his greatest foe. In the next three years he'd beaten him back, freed his thralls, and killed the Hooded King. Ty Hill had been fighting for nigh on twenty years to free the miners. Ten years later and the King of the Rock controlled all of the Westerlands, and Good Ty Hill was his greatest friend. He even tried to make a lord of Ty Hill and marry him to his sister, but Ty Hill refused. Instead he traveled for the rest of his life, organizing the guild and writing the Rules of Safe Mining."

 

Gwyn finished and the tent went silent until Lyarra spoke, grinning.

 

"That's a  _ wonderful _ story, Gwyn."

 

"It's better because it's  _ true _ ." Gwyn replied with a strange sort of serenity. "You can even see Good Ty Hill's grave in the old played out mines above the Crag if you're willing to walk and can get the Guild Master for that district to guide you down. See, there's a district map in the ledger…"

 

Lyarra looked on, crowding next to her husband now as Gwyn sat above the book on the floor and turned the pages. Sure enough, there was a map of the Westerlands spread across two pages of the book. In different colors of ink and simple and easy-to-read lettering the whole of the Westerland was divided first into districts, then into individual mines with numbers attached and each Guild Hall marked off with a star in a different color.

 

"If  _ every _ miner in the Westerlands belongs to the Miners' Guild," Oberyn mused, his tone soft and dangerous enough to jar Lyarra out of the happy place her mind had gone as she was offered so much more to learn. "It must be very powerful."

 

"Why do you think it's symbol is a sleeping giant?" Gwyn smirked. "Even more, look. Read number seventeen in the ' _ Responsibilities of Guild Members' _ ."

 

" _ All guild members shall have two years of training in arms and warfare between ages one-and-ten and three-and-ten _ ." Lyarra read as Oberyn slid an arm around her silently and idly rested a hand over her belly, petting their babe as he was wont to do when thinking deeply.

 

"Three-and-ten is as young as a miner can be." Gwyn explained. "Before that they won't let you into the mines. Now read nineteen."

 

" _ On days and nights when the moon is full, miners are excused from duty within the mines. During this time the miners shall take up arms and practice warfare in an organized fashion as dictated by the Guild in agreement with the Lord of Casterly Rock in order that the levies may remain ready for service." _

 

" _ Levies _ ." Oberyn's head snapped up and he fixed Gwyn with a close glance. "I had recognized the armor, but not without the Lannister Red. They are the foot soldiers of the Westerlands army, aren't they?"

 

"How do you think one of the smaller kingdoms in Westeros can field a large army, quickly, and have it immediately ready for battle?" Gwyn asked. "Or, for that matter, why do you think our army is feared so much? We can't call as many men as the Reach. We don't have the fearsome reputation of warriors that the North has. What we do have is a large body of men who move _tons_ of stone every day, who work _hard_ , and work in _groups_. Men who rely on each other utterly every day for most of their lives. Our civilian levies are as competent and well-trained as professional armies for hire in Essos."

 

Lyarra could feel Oberyn struggling with his hate. These were the very same forces that had sacked King's Landing, and yet Gwyn's pride was real. Lyarra reached out and, without thinking, curled her hand around the Mark on his wrist. The touch was electric and, for a moment, she was lost in his anger and hurt even as she felt him struggle not to automatically take it out on Gwyn. After a moment, her husband spoke horsely, jarring Gwyn from whatever place she'd gone where she forgot who she was talking to for the first time since Lyarra knew her.

 

"They are very efficient."

 

Gwyn blinked and her face fell. She looked upset, then nervous. Then, very hesitantly and with obvious effort to make herself do so, Gwyn spoke.

 

"Lord Tywin didn't send any foot soldiers into the Red Keep." She offered hesitantly. "He only sent in his household knights and private guards and retainers. He wanted to be the one to control it. If he'd sent the Guild in, then he'd have had to give the Guild some say in what was done, and Lord Tywin doesn't share power… besides, murder and rape are crimes that immediately see your status in the Guild revoked. No guild member will risk that on  _ any _ lord's orders."

 

Oberyn breathed in and out and then nodded. When he spoke again his voice was artificially level. Gwyn shivered in response and Lyarra was left fretting that this was going too far.

 

"You believe Lord Tywin  _ ordered _ my sister's murder and that of her children."

 

Gwyn breathed for several long, tense minutes. When she looked up at Oberyn her blue eyes were dark and sad. Her face was clouded by fear. Instead her expression was grimly honest.

 

"Lady Genna had words with a maid who was carrying tales." Gwyn said softly. "Lady Genna herself said that Lord Tywin was upset by the bloodbath that Prince Aegon and Princess Rhaenys' deaths had turned into… a few quiet words to calm them and then a pillow pressed against their faces would have been his preferred method of their death."

 

Oberyn stood then and Lyarra almost found it hard to breathe as his rage pressed against her. She held onto his wrist with both hands and rose herself. Between standing up abruptly, how long it had been since her last meal, and the tumultuous feelings being broadcast from her soulmate, Lyarra grew dizzy and lurched on her feet. Oberyn caught her, though he lost his sheet in the process and Gwyns squeaked and turned away.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

"It's too much." She breathed out, hoping he'd understand.

 

Worry tamped down his hate and he settled her back on the bed, sitting up, as he retrieved his sheet.

 

"You've not eaten lately, either. Lady Gwyn?"

 

Gwyn got Lyarra a cup of apple cider. With her dizziness, they were avoiding even watered wine. Gwyn also uncovered a basket of roasted walnuts and brought it over. As she nibbled on the snack her husband settled at her side and breathed evenly, letting his fury recede to something manageable. After a while he leaned over the ledger again.

 

He flipped past the rules and maps and other things written in the front of the book. Past that, organized in a massive number of tiny columns and lines that made Lyarra's head spin given all the different figures and colors it was arranged with, was the most complicated ledger she had ever seen. The pattern of it was familiar and reminded her of Gwyn's bookkeeping, but the sheer mass of recorded information made for a complex image.

 

"Now, what is this?"

 

"Mines doesn't last for thousands of years, Prince Oberyn." Gwyn grinned wickedly and explained. "The secret to the Lannister's wealth has nothing to do with _the_ _Rock_. If they'd mined that since the Age of Heroes, it would have crumbled into the sea long ago."

 

"Instead, every mine in the Westerlands is technically owned by the Lord of the Rock - once the King of the Rock. Either way, he has what we call  _ mineral rights  _ in the Westerlands. Gold, silver, iron, tin, copper, opals, emeralds, everything of real value belongs to the Lord of the Rock. If, however, you're a lord with lands of your own, you have the right to  _ mine _ those minerals. Not to keep it all, mind you, but you can mine them. When you do you have to give a large cut to Casterly Rock. We call that the Lion's Share."

 

"That's where that expression came from?" Lyarra asked, fascinated.

 

"Yes, it's not actually about lions eating things." Gwyn apologized.

 

"Go on." Oberyn pushed, looking up briefly from the ledger as he kept flipping through it.

 

"Well, there's the Lion's Share, then there's the Lord's Share, then there's the Miners' Share." Gwyn went on. "The Miners' Share goes mostly towards pay, but some goes into the Guild itself. More goes to the Guild from the dues every miner pays. This is for all of the different funds the Guild keeps. One's for Widows and Orphans because mining's dangerous no matter what you do to try and make it safer. Another is for Pensions for those too old or too hurt to work. Then there's the Winter Fund."

 

Lyarra's attention was riveted as any Northerner's would have been and she hazarded a guess as to what it was.

 

"Something set aside, so that food and other essentials can be bought for Winter?"

 

"Yes." Gwyn nodded eagerly, leaning forward. "You see, the Westerlands can feed itself during the other seasons, but we're a rocky, harsh place. We can never put by enough food to make it through a Winter that's more than two years long. The Guild puts away huge amounts of gold and jewels and silver so that when Winter comes, there's enough money to buy in fur and lumber from the North and, _most_ _importantly_ , food from Essos."

 

" _ Amazing _ ." Oberyn breathed out, sitting back, his expression utterly impressed. "The organization of this - Doran will  _ love _ it. I'm  _ infuriated _ that the Lannisters have anything to do with it."

 

"On the contrary, you should be kissing my feet that I've told you." Gwyn replied and sat forward, her tone urgent. "The guild never leaves home, Prince Oberyn.  _ Never _ . Not unless it's their duty to go to war. Otherwise, they're smallfolk and they're just getting by. The Quality's nonsense in other lands is none of their business. So why was riding to King's Landing the first thing that my grandfather's friend did after the lots were drawn, the exit audits done, and he became Guildmaster?"

 

"He needed to see Lord Tywin." Oberyn let the first part of the comment pass, his black eyes reflecting red in the candlelight as dawn begin to creep through the tent, reminding Lyarra of Ghost's eagerness when she spotted prey.

 

"Yes, but  _ why _ ? Ser Kevan's always been a good enough man to talk to when appointed Lord Tywin's proxy at the Rock in the past."

 

_ "Winter Is Coming." _

 

Her house words slipped out of Lyarra's mouth. Gwyn smiled and nodded in a slow, ominous way. Beside her, Oberyn let out a slow breath and it hissed dangerously between his teeth.

 

"It just strikes me… how  _ expensive _ the Queen's marriage has been for Lord Twyin."

 

"Yes, Your Grace,  _ very _ ." Gwyn replied with a terrible solemnity. "And think of the years before that? The Lannisters themselves don't live cheap and Lord Tytos gave so many loans away. Many were paid back, but the biggest loan, the one that was as much as all the others put together? Well, all that gold is still sitting in the flooded tunnels and vaults under Castamere."

 

"Then, of course, he paid off the Iron Bank when Aerys refused to pay off Jaehaerys the Second’s debts." Oberyn added almost lightly.

 

"For which Lord Tywin was never paid back." Lyarra realized.

 

" _ Never _ ." Oberyn agreed with his teeth bared and opened the ledger again. "Lady Gwyn, perchance who holds the funds for the Guild?"

 

"Small local funds, like the Widows and Orphans funds and the Pensions are held in vaults under individual or district Guild Halls." Gwyn explained, her voice heavy with significance. "But the Winter Fund is so massive, it couldn't possibly be safe anywhere but the Rock, could it?"

 

"Gwyn, you aren't suggesting…?"

 

Lyarra stared in horror at her friend as she felt her stomach clench in terrible certainty. Her Northern mind recoiled at the mere  _ thought _ of what she'd just realized Gwyn was hinting at. Beside her Oberyn was a swirling mass of grim satisfaction, deep anger, and a hate so pure it was almost holy.

 

"Master Tollen couldn't say anything, because if he did he'd violate parts of the agreement between the Guild and the Rock." Gwyn stated with grim certainty. "But there are ways to talk without saying anything. The Maesters are predicting a terrible winter, Lord Twyin should have already worked out a system with the Guildmaster to begin buying grain and other things in now, but he hasn't started yet. The Guildmaster never would have ridden out to King's Landing to talk to Lord Twyin unless he already wasn't getting the answers to why that is from Ser Kevan back at the Rock itself."

 

"Why doesn't he just ask to see the Winter Fund itself, if it's in the vaults?" Lyarra demanded.

 

"He can't." Gwyn shook his head. "Not unless he's ready to start off some real problems between the Guild and the Lord of the Rock. If there's nothing wrong he's mortally insulted Lord Tywin. The Lannister Lord of Casterly Rock has had  _ Friend of the Guild _ as one of his titles for five-thousand-years. It's not  _ done _ to just demand he open up the vaults. Not without some kind of proof, and if he'd gotten proof of any kind, Master Tollen never would have given me the Ledger."

 

"Why did he give you the ledger?"

 

The ledger Oberyn was now softly looking at as though it were his own flesh and blood.

 

"It's got  _ everything _ in it, Lyarra! I know exactly how much income Lord Twyin had last year from all of the mines in the Westerlands. In fact, I know his precise quarterly income, with interest, if he stored it in the Rock or with the Iron Bank or wherever since the last winter when you were born!"

 

"You also know how much the Guild dug up to begin with." Lyarra nodded slowly. "If you can reconcile the two and find out how much he gave to King Robert, plus all the other debts…"

 

"Then we'll know if Lord Tywin had to steal from the Winter Fund to pay for the King."

 

"What happens if he did?"

 

"Then the Guild will call up all the levies and Lord Tywin and every relative or retainer who knew of the theft will be buried alive in the tunnels beneath Casterly Rock."

  
  



	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive at King's Landing, where someone needs to invent a medieval AA so Robert can attend meetings, Cersei is having a bad day, and Joffrey is... himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Joffrey Baratheon? Isn't he his own warning? Either way, mentions of off-screen violence.

**Chapter Twenty - 297 A.C.**

 

Ned reflected that irony had never been his friend. It was ironic that his father had placed all his hopes and dreams on Brandon's shoulders only to die because of Brandon's impulsiveness. It was ironic that the one thing the woman Ned loved held against him was loving another when she'd begun their marriage in duty, clearly wishing it was his brother who'd lived to wed her. It was also ironic that, after a lifetime of keeping a secret from Lyarra, he now had the disturbing feeling she wasn't telling him something of vital importance.

 

"It's not the babe, is it?" Ned asked in worry as he gently nudged his daughter aside and began to saddle Ash for her. "Should you be riding at all? I don't think it's wise.  _ Cat _ never rode while she was with child, nor your grandmother."

 

"I was all but born on a saddle, you've said so yourself." Lyarra had a wan smile. "Oberyn says it is fine as long as we go gently into the city, and it will be my last ride before the babe's born. All the ladies are riding, Father."

 

" _ Why _ ?"

 

That was another important question.

 

"It affords more maneuverability in the event of a mob turning ugly." Oberyn Martell's voice from behind him was, for once, entirely serious.

 

"A horse is easier to pull down than a heavily built wheelhouse." Ned argued.

 

"A heavily built wheelhouse flips easily enough. If it's laying on its side, there's no escape at all, especially if it's been set ablaze." The Viper shook his head. "Riots aren't fought like wars, and I saw my fair share of them in the Free Cities. There they've more experience with slave revolts and food riots amongst the commons than warfare as we fight it."

 

"I'll take your word for it."

 

"I'll have the ladies heavily guarded and Lyarra by my side. Should anything happen, I've given my guards instructions to form around them and hack their way out of the city. We'll make for the nearest secure point and regroup."

 

"I'll issue similar commands." Ned agreed, relieved by the plan as much as he was sickened by its necessity.

 

Behind them he could see Gwyn standing beside her own spotted horse and a placid chestnut gelding. Lady Walda was surveying the gelding with clear worry, but Lady Myria was warmly encouraging the Frey. Ned was just relieved to see that they'd found a mount that would suit the girl's complete lack of experience.

 

"You do not believe it will be  _ necessary _ , though?" Lyarra asked quietly, her hand thoughtlessly curled over her flat belly.

 

Ned automatically reached for his daughter, to reassure her with an embrace. His hand impacted with the Viper's as Prince Oberyn curled an arm around Lyarra's shoulders at the same moment. Ned glared at the man. He raised his hand silently in a gesture that confused Ned for a split second until he caught sight of the carved weirwood ring curled around the man's left third finger. He'd seen others among the Dornish party do the same in a silent, Rhoynish declaration of their wed state.

 

Lyarra subverted Ned's grudging acknowledgement of the man's rights as a husband by stepping away and wrapping her arms around her father's chest in a fierce hug. Ned grinned over her head at the other man and enfolded her in his grip. He did so with care, however, as it was never far from his mind that Lyarra's nameday was almost upon them. Like Lyanna, the niece he'd claimed for a daughter would go to childbed as a young wife of five-and-ten. It was enough to make his blood run as cold as some accused his heart of being.

 

"It will be fine, Father. Master Tollen was clear that the riots are over." Lyarra assured him. "The King is back in the capital, and Lord Arryn will arrive with a large food shipment soon if he has not already."

 

"You're likely right, Lya." Ned acknowledged, but he continued to hold on both for the reassurance of having her safe in his arms and the growing annoyance on the Red Viper's face.

 

No matter what he said, in truth, Ned felt that just gave him more to worry over. Had the Crown had to buy in that food itself, or was it part of normal trade merely disrupted by the unrest and other difficulties brought by the Plague? How had Robert's bandit hunt gone? Was there success, or had the brigands done as they usually did and melted away? What the  _ hell _ was going on with the Queen and her father? How ill was Lord Tywin?

 

As much as Ned loathed the dishonor the man was capable of, Lord Tywin had been a force to be reckoned with in Westeros for more than a generation. The guildmaster had talked of unrest in the Westerlands, and that didn't surprise Ned. The Westerlands had terrible losses in the Plague. The Old Lion himself had been one of the few to survive and recover from a bout of Greyplague, but he was old enough that he'd apparently never recovered his strength afterward. 

 

If the Crown's main source of support collapsed, would all of Westeros devolve into war again?

How much, Ned reflected darkly as he looked at the black-eyed man who'd now taken over saddling Ash, could he count on his new goodson to encourage it to do so? That was a great worry. He blamed Dorne not at all for its grudge, for he'd gone to war for his slaughtered family. That did not mean he didn't fear what that grudge might bring.

 

_ Moat Cailin,  _ Ned reflected with a kind of grim certainty,  _ was no longer just a dream _ . He would have to begin construction as soon as he returned north. The sooner he was back in Winterfell, the better… though he would have to ride to the Neck to make arrangements, and then often thereafter to oversee construction. Thank all the Gods for Robb. His son's letters were a source of endless reassurance and his pride in his Heir knew no bounds. He could leave much in Robb's hands while he bent his experience and knowledge of war to making sure the North's defenses were secure in case the Lannister Lord's death sparked chaos when the old ghoul could finally haunt no more.

 

"She often is." Prince Oberyn agreed. "Might you perhaps consider returning _mine_ _wife_?"

 

"You'll have me the rest of our lives, don't be greedy." Lyarra scolded and Ned grinned through his sadness at just how much she sounded like Lyanna scolding her brothers for each's attempts to monopolize her attention.

 

Benjen always won anyway. Though he'd been but two years younger than her, Ned had watched as his toddling baby sister latched onto and claimed the youngest of their Pack as her own. Lyanna Stark's first words at seeing the scowling, screaming, kicking red bundle that grew into the First Ranger of the Wall had been, _ 'My baby!'. _

 

"It's not in a viper's nature to be generous."

 

" _ Try _ ."

 

Lyarra finally released Ned and turned towards her husband, her expression softening further even as the gray eyes they shared grew playful. Ned noted that, despite the smirk on his face, the man's posture was ramrod straight and his shoulders stiff. The closer they had gotten to the city, the more the man's temper had frayed.

 

As they had stopped at a bend in the river, just out of easy sight of the city, to prepare and make themselves fully presentable, the Red Viper had gone quiet. Ned found himself wishing that he'd heard  _ more _ of the man's intolerable baiting. Angry and throwing quips about was one thing, Ned had learned. It was the man coping with his inner demons. Silence meant that the battle had gone underground where none could know the outcome as far as to what the man would do next.

 

"You're well?"

 

The quiet question from the Viper prompted Ned to take a few steps towards his own warhorse. He'd never seen the point in owning a southron destrier. In the North the lines were a little more blurred between the types of horses bred and kept, and refinement was never as important as capability. The great black stallion he rode was capable and fine in every way, and if it didn't fit southron sensibilities for beauty, he was confident it could carry him all day in full armor, and that it would run into an enemy's spears without shying. That was what mattered.

 

With his back to his daughter and her husband, offering them privacy, he felt his eyes turn towards the rest of the party. The women he let handle themselves. He liked them all well enough, but ever since he'd asked Walda to dance twice at Riverrun so that she wouldn't feel slighted because of her weight, the girl's blue eyes fixed on him a little too often. Hers was a shy, polite infatuation, but it was embarrassing nonetheless.

 

Ser Domeric Bolton, the first knight that Ned had ever heard of who'd stood vigil in a weirwood and been anointed by oil infused with weirwood sap, was preparing his own horse. A stallion a full hand-and-a-half taller than Ned's. One that he had to admit was clearly a Northern destrier. Seeing that Lyarra and her husband had stepped behind Ash's bulk prompted Ned to nod at the guard holding his own horse's reins and move to speak to the future Lord Bolton.

 

For all that his daughter's nights had grown quieter, Ned had no doubt that…  _ certain activities _ had not ceased. He was grateful to remain ignorant. Still, that changed nothing of the fact that they'd set out late that morning because the Prince and his wife had not emerged from their tent until well after when they had originally planned to leave. Nor did it change that, after he was in such a foul temper, Lyarra had led her husband to bed early the night before in an effort to sooth the Viper's dangerous bite. The long time spent without Gwyn or any of the other ladies helping her prepare at this stopover was not something Ned was as ignorant of as he'd like, either. If it kept poison out of Robert's plate and spears from his back, Ned was grateful for it, but he wished he could block his mind from working out Lyarra's strategy in snake charming.

 

"Lord Stark." Ser Domeric bowed and Ned nodded in return.

 

"A gift from your uncle, Lord Ryswell?" He nodded his head at the horse.

 

The great war horse was a blood bay, grimly appropriate given House Bolton's reputation. Its thick mane and tail were wavy black draped over its arched, muscular mahogany red neck and long legs. Its haunches were massively strong and it was testament to good breeding and perfect proportion. Large, lively brown eyes watched everything and it shifted to dance in place before calming immediately as the young knight rested a hand against its arched and crested neck and petted it.

 

"Aye." Pride radiated off the boy of six-and-ten and his smile was readier than Lord Bolton's ever was, though they shared the same unearthly pale eyes. "The tack was a gift from my aunt, and my Lord Father sent to Tobho Mott in King's Landing itself for my plate."

 

"A fine gift, worthy of a great lord and his son." Ned agreed.

 

The plate armor the boy was wearing was damned fine. Stained dark, nearly black, the steel was of good quality and still pristine. Etched onto the chest plate and then enameled, the flayed man of House Bolton stood out clearly. It wasn't as graphic was he was used to seeing the symbol depicted, however. Instead it looked more like a red x-shape overlayed over a pink shape of the same sort. Around the gorget and shoulder plates and around the symbol on his chest, tiny garnets glittered, embedded in the steel, like drops of blood. Northern scrollwork, entwined like branches and brambles and familiar to every Northman, were etched here and there to further grace the armor. A fine cape, unashamedly the color of a lady's blush, was draped from his shoulders.

 

"Thank you, my lord."

 

"You'll ride in the tourney, then?"

 

"I look forward to it." The young man's smile was broad and brought out his resemblances to the Ryswells; a resemblance that had been dampened when he pulled his thick, wavy brown hair into a queue at the back of his neck and plaited it tightly to fit beneath his helm. "I'll likely participate in the melee, though that's not where my talent lies. The joust is what I'm eager for. I hear there's to be a large crowd."

 

"Aye, the purses are high." Ned grunted, not pleased with that.

 

What did please him was the solemn look that the boy gave him in return. Ser Domeric felt the need to say nothing, but he understood the problem. Knight though he was, the man had gone to sit and welcome the miners when they'd overnighted in their camp. The guild party had been free with the same information that Master Tollen had shared with Ned, though his guards had not offered a word beyond that. As a result, the whole party knew there could be no certainty of what they would find in King's Landing.

 

" _ How _ high?"

 

Ser Domeric Bolton was still a lad of six-and-ten dependent on a stern father's largesse.

 

"Forty-thousand gold dragons for the winner of the joust, twenty-thousand for the runner-up in the same, twenty-thousand for the winner of the melee, and ten-thousand for the winner of the archery contest." Ned told the boy, as Robert had bragged of it to him in his letter.

 

Ned would have preferred the gold be used to pay back some of the Crown's debts. Including the one currently owed to  _ him _ . He knew better than to attempt to reason with Robert when his friend was in a giving mood, however, and pettily hoped the gold came out of Lord Tywin's vaults. Had Tywin not been monster enough to order an innocent princess and her children slaughtered, then mayhaps the Gods wouldn't have felt the need to bind Lyarra to a Martell Prince.

 

Ned watched Ser Domeric Bolton take in the fact that the tourney winner would receive a sum equal to half the dowry of a Lord Paramount's daughter. Few lords' daughters outside the Westerlands were worth half of that. Adolescent greed visibly fought against the boy's disquiet at the idea of the Crown offering such sums in the first place, and Ned finally watched the boy's expression turn into one of determination.

 

"At least if I win, it will help my people through Winter, and not sponsor yet more lavish spectacles."

 

"Aye, there's that." Ned hazarded a small crooked smile and clasped his arm as he moved back this his horse. Beside him he watched Lyarra, her face flushed, allow her husband to help her into the saddle. It was time to go.

 

* * *

For the first time on the journey, Lyarra sat in Ash's saddle and wished she'd had the option of the wheelhouse's comfortable cushions. The night before she'd managed to get her husband, who'd grown fierce and wrathful towards even his friends in his agitation, to take to bed early. The massage she'd given him had calmed him into a fitful sleep, but he'd woken her later with nightmares. Feeling his agony in his dreams and having to wake him from them only to watch him come to grips with the reality of his sister's death again and again had been exhausting.

Nor had the only way she'd found to offer him comfort been restful. Oberyn sought comfort and relief from his whirring mind in distraction. His methods were violence and sensuality. In his turbulent state, sparring with Oberyn wouldn't have been safe for anyone. Even their lovemaking was demanding, and Lyarra had found herself very sensitive even before that. Now she was distinctly sore sitting in her normally comfortable saddle.

 

Lyarra was wearing one of the riding dresses from her trousseau. This one was Sansa's doing. Instead of merely being split front and back in the usual fashion of Northern riding gowns and the tight trousers worn beneath, Sansa had decided that the skirt on this dress ought to be shaped like the petals of a flower. It moved from pearl white shading at the shoulders to dark blue at the tips of the eight sculpted panels of her skirt. Winter roses were embroidered generously over the shoulders, and the soft gray buckskin of her breeches was little defense against feeling ridiculous.

 

Walda had been who'd gotten at Lyarra's hair for once. Gwyn was helpful, but distracted, and she had reluctantly given up her place to Walda and Lady Myria. Now Lyarra's curls had been tamed backwards into a series of braids wound together with silver and blue ribbons in a single complex plait down her back. Moonstones Gwyn had found had been laboriously polished over the length of their journey and strung on a ribbon that now crossed Lyarra's forehead and wound backwards into her hair.

 

It felt good to have her sword belted at her waist. If there was trouble, she wanted to be armed. Having a husband who wanted the same was something she felt she would never take for granted in Oberyn. Even had she been able to wed Smalljon Umber, he'd have indulged her inclinations and allowed her training as she could manage it. Her soulmate actively fostered it.

 

"You look good, Arya." Lyarra grinned at her sister briefly and Arya grinned back broadly.

 

Her sister wore a similar riding dress, though only split front and back. Gwyn had decorated it for her, with help from the Dornish ladies. The dark gray overdress had a white shield stitched broadly across the back and House Stark's gray wolf built up on it in Gwyn's heavy embroidery. Amber eyes gleamed threateningly and Lady Myria had lent her needle to put delicate hints of red silken blood on the wolf's teeth. The dagger Lord Gargalen had gotten Arya was prominently displayed on her belt and Lyarra gleefully thought of Oberyn's promise that together they would get her sister a sword suited to her size while they were in the capitol.

 

_ Presuming,  _ Lyarra thought darkly, _ that everything didn't go to Hell first. _

 

"Are you alright, Lady Walda?" Gwyn's accent was very much returned to the cultured, crisp tones she'd learned at the Rock. She sat ramrod straight on Patches' back in her own dark yellow gown.

 

"He hasn't thrown me yet!" Walda's light voice was full of good cheer. "I'll owe him an apple when we get to the Red Keep."

 

"Well, if he does throw you, remember what we talked about." Lyarra turned to advise the other girl, who looked plump and rather pretty in a riding dress of cornflower blue.

 

"Land on someone I don't like to break my fall." Walda's smile grew playful and beside Lyarra, Oberyn turned from his dark thoughts to look in amusement at his wife and her lady-in-waiting.

 

"That was  _ my _ advice." Gwyn piped up.

 

_ "Roll with the fall, _ Walda." Lyarra huffed and beside her Oberyn quipped.

 

"But if you can crush your enemies on the way down, why not?"

 

Lyarra pinched the bridge of her nose and wished she could just laugh. She was too full of worry over too many things to do that. Well, worry and a healthy dose of righteous rage.

 

Lyarra had been rather approving of the Guild. It assured that the miners got nothing more what a lord should give his people naturally, but it was such a good idea to have that assurance. Everything was set down in writing, everything known, and all of it arranged in the most trustworthy system possible, bound by oaths and brotherhood. They even chose their leaders by lots, which Lyarra found a dubious idea… but it seemed to work for the Miners' Guild if it wouldn't work anywhere else. Either way, it was a kind of safety net against bad leadership cropping up in a lord's line.

 

Her Northern heart had fallen rather in love with the Winter Fund idea, as well. House Stark had long done something similar, but informally. During the warm years of summer and spring, House Stark hoarded its goods and its profits. Should Winter grow long, that profit could then flow out to the shores of Essos to buy in food, or seed when spring came, to keep the people of the North  _ safe _ .

 

While all the noble houses were supposed to do something similar, they did not do it to such a degree as Lyarra's family. Ultimately it was the Starks who the North turned to when the cold winds blew. 'Winter is Coming' was not just a warning, it was also a reminder of one's  _ duty _ . The Stark in Winterfell had to put aside and be prepared to take care of his people.

 

It made her proud of Dorne, as well. The bride price might be a Rhoynish tradition, something Oberyn would have given to a wife regardless, and partially borne of self-interest, as the food surplus in Dorne would damage prices if not ameliorated by shipping it elsewhere, but it was still a kindness to House Stark. A great profit could have been derived, by shipping it to the Westerlands at inflated prices, and they could have gouged the Lannisters horribly in doing so.

 

They'd known that the North would hand over Lyarra's dowry with no expectation of anything in return. Still her husband and his brother had offered up what the North would value more than anything: winter stores. They'd done it willingly, and despite all of the grief Oberyn gave her father, he'd readily admitted that he intended to accept alternate sources of wealth from the beginning for the dowry and offer the bride price regardless.

 

Dorne had known about the loan the Starks had given the Crown. They'd just assumed they'd be taking the excess in lumber and other things in stages over a long period of time. Her husband had been staggered to find out how much lumber was set aside and seasoned. He'd been even more impressed when he realized that every spring the smallfolk were mobilized to raise and plant young saplings to replace what logging culled. Lord Gargalen had sent out a number of ravens with carefully copied tables on them showing how measured the timing of logging and replanting the great forests was given in the North. Apparently the forests they did have in the Red Mountains were about to gain similar regulation.

 

The Winter Fund was the  _ perfect _ solution, as far as Lyarra could see, to the Westerland's own problems. Having percentages of what monies went where and such written down and recorded was just such a good dea. Too rocky to grow large amounts of food easily, and with population centered in mining towns rather than spread out over large areas, the Westerlands main exports were goats and sheep that could graze on the harsh scrub in the hills. Radishes, beans, and other things grew well in small gardens, but the Westerlands simply could not put enough food away for a long winter.

 

By having the Guild put away the funds, it removed any chance that a greedy lord would usurp it. Or that an irresponsible figure would fritter it away through bad investment as loans were never given from the Winter Fund. Instead it just sat, growing larger every year, as every single miner contributed to it through their dues and then that was added to by the guild's share.

Lyarra had joined Oberyn and Gwyn in pouring over the ledger, but quickly backed off as an unnecessary party. She was far from bad at sums, but Oberyn and Gwyn were in their element. Gwyn had learned to manage money from her mother, whose father had taught her after learning from the Guild itself. Gwyn arranged her household books in a far simpler form of precisely the same system used in the Great Ledger.

 

Still… Gwyn and Oberyn could stare at the book until their eyes crossed, but it remained that the information they lacked wasn't in the Ledger. They might know Lord Tywin's income from the mines, the Guild might have also gathered and supplied details on his other incomes, and they had the exact sum held by the Winter Fund, but they knew nothing of the details of the Crown's debt. Instead it was in King's Landing in the hands of the Master of Coin. The King's Master of Coin was currently Lord Edmund Waxley of the Vale. A loyal, ambitious man, Lyarra sincerely doubted he'd think favorably on telling anyone details of the King's debts.

 

Something inside Lyarra writhed in grief at saying nothing of it to her father. She was a married woman now, part of House Martell, and what honor would she have if she did not hold her husband's secrets? Besides, she'd been swayed by Oberyn's passion and Gwyn's logic.

 

Lyarra wanted to bring the ledger before the King and the Hand. Lord Jon Arryn's honor was as well known as her father's, and the King had once been the brave knight from all of her childhood stories. Now… now, however, they were both stained. The King was the laughing giant from her father's boyhood stories, but he was also a man who allowed innocents to be murdered and then made his best friend swear an oath to shield their killers. Jon Arryn was a man who'd enabled his foster son to do all this, as well as taken an unwilling, weeping girl young enough to be his granddaughter to wife in order to buy an army, an ally and an Heir.

 

Lyarra had infinite faith in her father, but part of that was knowing that he would seek justice. He always did the right and honorable thing. Now, Lyarra couldn't help being persuaded that the right and honorable thing was to help the Guild find out the truth, but to then leave the fate of the Westerlands in the hands of its own people. The Crown could hardly afford to topple its greatest banker. Especially if it would mean they accepted that their debt was owed to those who'd demand immediate repayment. Justice wasn't in the King's best interest.

 

_ "I see it!" _

 

Arya's excited shout drew Lyarra's attention away from minding Ash, the road, and nothing else but her inner thoughts. She looked up as the road turned and sucked in a breath as she saw it. King's Landing lay spread out at the mouth of where the Blackwater Rush met the bay in a great walled tangle of humanity with a red castle crouched over it like some hulking spider.

 

"It  _ does _ look like a spider!" Gwyn, in a moment of childish delight, echoed her thoughts and Lyarra had to smile a little as she heard several others laugh.

 

"Mind you can't put this one in a jar." Ser Ulwyk japed wryly.

 

"It would require a very large jar." Lady Jynessa added.

 

"Or an exceedingly large hammer." Jory Cassel snorted.

 

"Or many small ones." Gwyn's tone was so quiet that Lyarra doubted anyone else heard her.

 

"Pickaxes, mayhaps?" Oberyn murmured back and Gwyn's eyes, half-lidded and feline, glittered.

"That'd do, Your Grace."

 

Lyarra was also adding to her list of worries precisely how far her husband's desire for vengeance went. She was piling that atop the strange transformation that her playful, nervous friend was undergoing. Gwyn was still herself most of the time; full of mischief and ideas and willing to give you the gown off her back if she cared for you. Underneath that, though, there were hints of some desperate hope that Lyarra was torn between adoring for its spirit and fearing because she didn't yet know what the hope was for.

 

Like any ride, there was nothing to do but hold on and try and keep your mount from running away with you.

 

"I think Winterfell's bigger." Arya sounded disappointed.

 

"It covers more area by maybe half." Oberyn agreed. "The keep itself is larger, Arya, because there is far less space inside the walls due to buildings and towers and the like being all but piled atop each other. Not to mention the tunnels beneath."

 

"Tunnels?" Arya sounded fascinated. "Are they secret?"

 

"They say Maegor the Cruel murdered all of the builders who completed the Red Keep so its secrets would never be known."

 

"Stay out of those tunnels, Arya." Lyarra's father stated bluntly and she cast a shy look at Lyarra's husband in hope.

 

"If I catch you exploring  _ any part _ of the Red Keep without my knowledge, permission, and at least two guards, Lady Arya, you will not be going to Dorne." Oberyn was implacable.

 

Arya wilted, but said nothing at the quiet, dangerous tone in the Viper's voice. Even Nymeria, flanking Arya's horse as Ghost did Ash, looked at him slightly askance. Lyarra could feel his turmoil building again. Reaching out from her saddle, she startled him as she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and squeezed as well as his armor would let her.

 

Oberyn also wore his plate armor. Lyarra had known he had a set for jousting. She'd known he'd brought it along as well but she had to admit that sitting in his tent as Walda and Myria fussed with her hair and watching Daemon put him into it? That had… done things for her.

 

"We'll get no closer staring."

 

Ned Stark's comment brought the brief halt the highest ranking members of the party had fallen into to an end. Lyarra nudged Ash forward and watched as Oberyn sat, his eyes glittering and dark, on his own borrowed mount. She held her silence as her husband grappled with griefs ever-fresh in his mind.

 

* * *

Ser Barristan Selmy had long been Commander of the Kingsguard. He'd lived to see sixty years come and fade, and would see his one-and-sixtieth nameday in four moons time. He had served three kings, and was sad to say that, as he neared the end of his life, he had never served a great king. He was sadder by far to say that the Kingsguard he now led was worthy of the man it served.

 

"Are you  _ quite _ ready, Ser Boros?"

 

The squat man adjusted his gleaming silver and white armor around his pronounced stomach and sat straighter upon his destrier at the Lord Commander's words. None of that changed the fact that the man was a coward at heart, a bully at best, and a man who never should have been appointed to the Kingsguard to begin with. Yet another of the Queen's creatures, he was a living symbol of both Queen Cersei's priorities and her discernment.

 

At least Meryn Trant and Preston Greenfield were gone. Barristan had dutifully recorded their stories in the White Book, and he'd mourned them as was proper for a brother Kingsguard, but he could not bring himself to miss them. Given the state of the relationship between the Queen and the King, he held out some hope that she would not manipulate her husband again into choosing unwisely. The Tourney would attract knights from far and wide, several of whom were second and third sons that Barristan had his eye on for the positions now open. He knew better than to think any lord would give an Heir to this Kingsguard. He was too old to fancy himself with a chance to bring the Kingsguard back to greatness, but perhaps some progress might be made towards making it good again before he died.

 

"All's at the ready, Lord Commander." The younger man reported and Barristan smiled harshly.

 

"Good, move out!"

 

The company of Gold Cloaks under his command were mounted and armored as well as they could be. They were also grim and a few of them were carrying bruises or wounds from the last riot. The City Watch had not fared well, and Barristan was more satisfied by that than he wanted to admit. They were not an honorable service. They'd been manageably corrupt under the old Master of Coin, slimy creature that Baelish was. Now, without him to run them, they had become half a menace themselves. Hopefully Lord Renly would do something about it now that he was Master of Laws. So far the Storm Lord's attention had been drawn to cleaning out the dungeons instead. Far too many had been found down there who no-one seemed to have any knowledge of arriving or who had sent them to be jailed or tortured.

 

As they passed down the Street of Seeds and through the city, it was impossible to miss the damage wrought by the Plague. Large swaths of buildings were abandoned with their windows boarded up. Worse to Ser Barristan's eyes were the areas burnt out. There'd been several bad fires during the Plague either set by mobs wild with fear and hunger, or simply the result of those too sick to tend a fireplace, brazier, or candle.

 

The most  _ recent _ fires felt like a fresh wound to the man called Barristan the Bold. They stood amongst the houses of moderately wealthy merchants that had been built in neat rows with large gardens on the southeastern side of Visenya's Hill. When the mob that had desecrated the Great Sept had fled, they'd gone that way instead of back to the slums directly, and slaughter had been the result.

 

More had followed afterward. While the King had been infuriated with his Queen's wild vengeance against anyone 'out of place' and 'plotting', he'd been equally incensed over the mutilation of his children's corpses. The result had been swift and gory, if more useful and direct than the Queen's screaming fit and the massacre that followed. Several figures who'd risen up amongst the poor - a dozen prominent Sparrows, a half-dozen respected tradesmen, and a handful of ambitious cousins and two hedge knights who fancied themselves demagogues- had all been rounded up. Their heads now decorated the battlements of the Red Keep. A full hundred-fifty men were being led north by an armed party of knights from the Vale and Crownlands with sellswords to reinforce them to take the Black.

 

Now the streets were quiet, but it was the quiet before a storm. Barristan was Marcher-bred and of Stormlands stock. He knew a bad one when it was coming, and he was old enough to have weathered more than his fair share.

 

Ser Barristan cursed Blount for his slowness and vowed some punishment when he heard the crowds. They'd turned to face the Lion's Gate and he could see the large party that had to belong to Lord Stark and Prince Oberyn Martell. They were proceeding down the road, yes, but a crowd had built up at seeing them arrive. Nor was the Lion's Gate the one Barristan would have preferred they entered if given a choice. The city's population had shifted with the Plague deaths. Now, with so many dead, the shanty town outside the walls was gone and demolished, but most of it had moved into empty homes around the Lion's Gate. It was Fleabottom's new twin.

 

For the rest of his life he would never forget the sight he saw then.

 

The crowd was milling, angry, and on the verge of becoming ugly. It was facing drawn blades and pointed spears. Anger was still fresh on everyone's mind. The city was hungry. Then one of the Dornish knights clad in copper scale mail and fine boiled leathers bellowed a voice as loud and harsh as his missing eye just as a younger knight finished wrestling with a silk banner and won control of it back from the day's wind.

 

"Make way for Prince Oberyn of House Martell!"

 

Never before had Barristan seen a crowd so large go so eerily silent. Not even in war had a reaction spread so fast. He would never be sure if the first shout that went up from a hoarse throat was Dorne or Doran, but there was no mistaking the roar that followed.

 

As he watched, angry shouts turned to screams of welcoming  _ joy _ . Whatever clods of dirt and shit that had been thrown before were dropped. Welcoming hands rose up to reverently reach for the riders. Tunics were pulled aside and shoulders bearing a now familiar sun-and-spear inoculation scar were showed with pride as mother's thrust children into the air to show, sometimes red and fresh, proof of Prince Doran Martell's generosity and forethought.

 

"Make way for the Kingsguard to welcome the Dornish to the Red Keep!" Ser Barristan bellowed in turn and soon the crowd that had been jostling them aside pulled back, their scowls and snarls turning to beaming smiles of approval.

 

A strange sense of timelessness stole over him and the hair on his arms raised beneath his gauntlets and mail. The last time he'd seen anything like this, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen had been alive. The smallfolk had loved their Silver Prince. So, in truth, had Barristan. Once he'd been his greatest hope for serving a truly great king.

 

"Lord Stark, is your party well?" Ser Barristan yelled as their two parties merged. "Prince Oberyn?"

 

"We're fine."

 

The answer was as stoic as expected, though his expression suggested unhappiness with everything he'd seen and some wonder at the scope of the change in reception. Barristan cold sympathize with all of that. He looked to the Prince of Dorne and got only a hand waved in his direction in response.

 

The tall, lean man was wearing cooper scales underneath dark steel plate brushed to a matte finish. Over that was a leather surcoat worked in a pattern of intertwined, seething vipers, and across its check was blazoned House Martell's arms. From his shoulders flowed a cloak of shot-silk, golden and sunset orange, and in the wind every time it shifted, it looked like living fire. He was reaching down into the crowd, looking both bemused and almost calculating as he clasped wrists with some common man or pressed a woman's hand.

 

"And the ladies?"

 

"We're well!" A beautiful voice, light and resonant at once, called out.

 

Ser Barristan turned to look at the voice's source. His first thought was that the woman had to be the princess, for the moonstones strung across her brow and her age. Her Stark looks cemented that idea, but brought another to the forefront of his mind. If he'd already feared having the Red Viper near the King he was sworn to protect, this Stark bride of his would mean more. As he led them back through the streets he was left to wonder, as everyone did, what the Gods were thinking.

 

* * *

His ribs and knee still ached from the fall from his horse, but Tywin Lannister would have been damned to all seven hells before he kept to his bed for  _ this _ . He had no illusions that the Red Viper had forgotten his grudge against their House. Such things happened in war. It was something he wished others would accept. As it was, Tywin was determined to remind his enemies of the full might and power of House Lannister.

 

A reminder that would have been better given were his son not arrayed in a white cloak as one of four such armored men flanking the King and Queen. Instead of Jaime, it was the Imp who would have stood at Tywin's side. He had reminded his family's shame to do his duty and continue his work as the King's Counter. Tywin arrayed himself instead in finery befitting his status and had those of his bannermen who'd ridden to King's Landing with him standing behind him as he stood to the left of his King, next to his daughter and grandson.

 

To the King's right, stood his brother. Lord Renly Baratheon might actually grow into someone useful. Tywin had been surprised and both pleased and cautious over the changes wrought in the shallow, frivolous boy. Attempting to cope with the Plague had brought the youngest Baratheon brother a sense of duty and responsibility. Being forced to shoulder a large loan from his brother had even given the man some idea of the limitations of power and the need to fit one's lifestyle to one's holdings.

 

Standing beside his brother in in a dark green tunic and black trousers underneath a gold and black surcoat, the boy managed to look slightly beyond his one-and-twenty years. Nothing could detract from that more than his companion. Were it not embarrassing enough that the Lord of Storm's End was bound to a male soulmate, it had to be one as flamboyant as the Knight of the Flowers. He was a glittering honey-gold panoply next to Lord Renly, though Tywin was relieved to see he'd opted for a green and gold velvet cape and not that ridiculous thing of live flowers he wore at tourneys.

 

Mace Tyrell stood off to the side of his son, looking pompous and fat in his finery. In deference to her age, the Queen of Thorns had a chair beside her son. To their right, a competent and proven lord stood. Randyll Tarly was reasonable and ambitious without being given to scheming. A useful man, Tywin mused and wished he had a dozen like him to be found. He'd lost as many nobles as smallfolk in the Westerlands and while his own family had prospered in securing seats for cousins and nephews, Tywin was painfully aware of how many of his own bannermen were  _ boys _ rather than  _ men _ .

 

His first thought when the gates opened and Barristan the Bold led the Dornish and Northern parties inside was to wryly note that his daughter had best not want flowers for any of the feasts her husband had planned. If so, they would add terribly to the royal debt. It looked as though the mob had gone from stripping the tombs of kings and the corpses of children to denuding the flower market. The cost of blooms would undoubtedly be the next thing to skyrocket.

 

"Do you hear  _ that _ ?" Cersei hissed. "The same unwashed refuse that ripped my children to  _ pieces _ is  _ cheering _ ."

 

Tywin offered no response. He was himself furious over what happened. The reprisals, however, left him both satisfied and not. The King had showed some manner of sense in how he'd put things in some kind of order, and targeting the leaders and all of their public supporters satisfied Tywin as the intelligent course of action. What infuriated him was the stupidity that led to it. Had the Stag been a competent king, things would never have gotten so bad. He'd have been quicker to hunt bandits than boar, quicker to spread the population out rather than call it into the city to die while the Plague ran rampant, and wouldn't still be wasting yet more money desperately needed to stabilize the Crown's position on a tourney with foolishly large purses.

 

In Tywin's youth, a tourney purse of a thousand dragons would have been a once-a-year event. A second place purse of half that would have been over-generous. Anything more than three or four-hundred for an archery tourney was folly. Not that Tywin hadn't offered large purses before, but he'd had the funds for it when he did it.

 

"You should be happy they're cheering at all. A sennight ago they were calling for your head." King Robert growled back, as though Cersei had been speaking to her husband.

 

She'd been speaking to her father. Tywin, however, chose to ignore her. His daughter had already proven her foolishness. She had one son between her position and being a useless hindrance to the Crown's stability. Despite that, she had not taken his orders to encourage the oaf to her bed seriously. Cersei was one-and-thirty. She still had a few fertile years left and it was imperative she provide more heirs to the throne in that time. If not, she would be put aside, and happily.

 

"We should have gone out and killed them  _ all _ , Father." Joffrey chose that moment to speak. "We could have had archers on the wall. Or we could-."

 

"Hold your tongue!" The King barked and looked at his son with the frustrated, helpless expression that Tywin noticed was directed at Joffrey more and more often. "The smallfolk are ours to guard as much as ours to rule. We've killed those who got the city riled, the rest are just stupid and hungry. If you'd attend your lessons, you'd know at least that much, and until you do, you need not speak."

 

Joffrey wilted into a sullen heap of self-pity. The twelve-year-old boy didn't whimper, but his lower lip trembled even as his hands clenched at his sides. He turned instantly towards Cersei, who reached out to brush his hair back and whisper something reassuring before turning venomous eyes on her King and Husband.

 

Jon Arryn was right, Tywin reflected with cold displeasure. No man whose loyalty was to a good and just king would follow Joffrey. Tywin worried that if he did not step in soon, no man who wished to follow a strong king would, either. The boy's tendencies were mad, profligate, and foolishly cruel. He had no self-control and was helplessly spoiled. The sooner they wed him to Stark's daughter and re-established ties and control over the North, the better, and if the girl flowered soon and a child could be produced, better still. With the smallfolk as discontent as they were, there'd be another rebellion before they'd accept a cruel king.

 

The party was bedecked in flowers. Flowers were tucked into the sword belts and saddles of the knights and guardsmen as well as the nobles. Helms were decorated with them as well, caught or accepted from willings hands and shocked grins at the sudden change from hostility to welcome. Petals clung to surcoats, mail, and leather. It was a scene out of a bard's song rather than anything to be expected in the trouble-wracked city of King's Landing.

 

The Martell party was the worst. The Dornish were adorned in hastily woven flower crowns and chains of the stuff had been cast onto horses now nibbling at their adornment. The gleaming banner of House Martell flapped in the breeze on a tall pole surmounted by a top-piece carved and painted so realistically that it seemed a viper with red and black scales was coiled and ready to strike from the top of the banner's pole. Someone had woven flowers around that as well.

 

"Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell, Brother to Doran Martell, Ruling Prince of Dorne, and his bride, Lyarra Martell nee Stark." The Senschel's voice rang out across the courtyard the King had insisted on having this greeting in rather than the throne room where it belonged.

 

Not that Tywin would have admitted to needing a chair there, either. As it was, he gripped the gold lion's head of his cane and did everything in his power to make it look as if he was not leaning against the stick. Not being sure of success did nothing for his mindset.

 

"Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North!"

 

The Senshel, Tywin decided then and there, was being replaced. He was already the replacement of yet another spare brought about by Plague deaths. He had no idea the correct way of doing things outside the throne room, and the King cared little enough for it to make the situation worse. First, the imbecile had announced the prince as he was reaching up to the dark-haired, flower-bedecked girl who had to be his Marked wife to help her from her own horse. With his hands full of woman, how precisely was the Viper supposed to bow? Next he'd moved directly onto the next ranking member of the party without giving time for greetings to proceed between the Dornish and the Crown.

 

It didn't matter, the King was striding forward. Tywin's goodson ignored propriety, though Ned Stark did not. While Ned Stark dropped to his knees, Robert Baratheon stepped forward and, with an impatient expression, gestured for the Warden to get up. Then the King just stood there sweating through his gold and black silks as he stared at his friend through narrowed eyes. The King's next words had Twyin pressing his lips together in irritated embarrassment over teeth made loose and painful during his battle with the Plague.

 

"You've gotten fat."

 

The Quiet Wolf silently looked over the King, then met the Stag's bloodshot blue eyes. There was a moment's tense silence, then Robert Baratheon burst into hearty laughter and drew the shorter, far leaner, man into a fierce embrace. It was something, Tywin thought in great irritation, that his own father might have done. Ned Stark returned it, laughing as well but with some sense of restraint, then the King drew back. A comment complaining about the lack of Ned Stark's presence in Robert's life since the Greyjoy Rebellion was offered, then the King went on.

 

" _ Well _ ? Let's get on with it and get out of this blasted sun." King Robert commented, as though he hadn't insisted on informality and was now making a mockery of the ways of the court and all its courtesies. "I've got a  _ proper _ feast planned to welcome you, Ned, and my Queen will throw another of her fits if everyone isn't given time to be bathed and presentable for it. Not that this whole city doesn't reek of piss and shit and lies. Where's your daughter, then? A princess from a bastard, not half-bad, is that, Ned? At least the Gods acknowledge  _ you _ properly…"

 

"Of course, Your Grace." Ned Stark cleared his throat and turned, the King moving with him as even the Northman knew well enough to try and patch up the mess made of the introductions. "May I present to you, Prince Oberyn Martell and my daughter, his wife, the Princess Lyarra?"

 

Tywin's gaze immediately riveted to the member of the couple he considered important. The bride of four or five and ten was not significant in and of herself. It was the bonds it created between Westeros' two most independent regions that was the threat to his family's position and the Crown's stability. The man known as the Red Viper of Dorne would be all too eager to exploit it, as well.

 

Oberyn Martell looked as expected. His expression was a mix of controlled hate and lingering disgust that barely touched his lips as he looked at the bloated oaf the Demon of the Trident had become. His black eyes were filled with barely restrained hate, of course, but he wasn't doing anything and he did offer the bow that the royalty of House Martell was required to. The Dornish, of course, had never knelt to Aegon or his descendants and so still retained the right to offer only a bow in the presence of the King.

 

" _ Lyanna _ ?"

 

Tywin's eyes whipped back to King Robert in shock, and he realized his error. For all his danger, it appeared the Red Viper was not who the Old Lion should have been watching. The girl was more important than he'd thought, if for no other reason than a trick of heredity.

 

For a moment, Tywin was thrust back into the Tourney where Aerys had stolen his son from him. Amidst all of his fury, Tywin had paid little mind to the Stark girl. Her embarrassment of the Martell Princess had even been somewhat sweet, as he had little patience for the pretenses of a bunch of hopped-up desert herdsmen with licentious and uncouth social habits. Despite having other things on his mind, however, Tywin did recall what she looked like.

 

Lyanna Stark had been a wild Northern beauty with a Stark's long face and depthless gray eyes. Princess Lyarra was much the same, only some contribution of her mother's unknown blood had led to an alchemy of the most dangerous sort. It had produced a spectacular beauty in the uplifted bastard, with high cheekbones, passionately full lips, and wider, larger eyes, more luminous than any Stark's had a right to be. For a moment one part of Tywin's mind silently added more weight to the rumors about Ashara Dayne than he'd ever given before. The rest was busy contemplating how badly the situation at hand could go.

 

" _ No _ ." The King corrected himself a second later, shaking his head like a bull about to charge before stepping forward. "I - you're the very  _ image _ of your aunt."

 

"I've been told so, Your Grace." The girl was blushing now, clearly uncomfortable under the fixed gaze of the King.

 

"She is a  _ treasure _ , is she not?"

 

The Red Viper finally spoke and Tywin sincerely wanted nothing more in that moment than to box Robert Baratheon's ears as he had once done to his younger brothers when they acted the fool.

 

"The Gods have been  _ most _ kind, Your Grace." Oberyn Martell went on, having been bid to rise at the same time Lyarra Stark had done the same and revealed her face. Crowned in gleaming white roses, wearing gray and white and blue, and dusted in flower petals, the girl was the definition of Northern beauty and Robert Baratheon's dead and rotting dreams come alive. All, Tywin thought, while the Red Viper of Dorne snaked an arm around his beautiful young wife's waist and pulled her against him, his gauntleted hand resting proprietarily over her hip. "After all of my life's many griefs, mine wife has been a balm to my soul and an unexpected joy."

 

"Yes… how could she not?" The King sounded strangled and looked dazed even beyond his already half-drunk state. He stepped back, his face falling into harsh lines as he regrouped. "Enough of this formality anyway. Ned, tell me who's here so we can go inside and get something to drink, dammit."

 

"Are you not going to introduce me to _your_ _Queen_ , Your Grace?" The Viper asked, his accent a drawling insinuation, venomous in its politeness.

 

"You know who she is."

 

Tywin watched his daughter's lips turn white at the shame of her husband's dismissal of her in front of the Dornish Prince. He ceased to listen with more than half an ear while Ned Stark named the important members of the rest of the two parties. The rest of his attention was dedicated to what had become the work of his life; mitigating the damage done by bad kings.

 

* * *

"How long until the feast?"

 

"Not as long as one could wish." Oberyn scowled and looked back over his shoulder. "Leave us, please, ladies. Come back in two hours time."

 

"But the feast is in _three_ _hours_!" Walda looked terribly alarmed at the command.

 

"I have faith in your skills."

 

Gwyn collected Walda and told her that they'd work on making themselves ready so they could devote all their attention to Lyarra when they got back. Listening to his wife groan at those slightly ominous words drew him away from the dark and delicious paths his mind had been wandering. They went instead to something wholly joyous, but worrying.

 

"You've had no rest today, Lyarra, lie down. I know not what this daughter of mine is thinking, being so difficult for her mother When we are home again, I shall have her sisters have a stern talk with her about how to properly treat a mother.." Oberyn japed with strained lightness as he led her out of the small solar attached to their quarters and into the bedroom. "You need not worry for the feast. I have made sure you are to be seated by me and not the Queen. Lady Jynessa will have the singular honor of entertaining the lioness tonight."

 

"Oh, they brought our things…" Lyarra sounded utterly relieved as she looked around and saw that the sumptuous solar and the furnishings provided did not carry over into the bed chamber. Instead, Oberyn had the furniture from the tent they'd shared for most of their marriage set up with their familiar chests, bed, and linens.

 

"I rest better in my own bed." Oberyn replied and began to help her undress as he ushered her towards the bed. "How rests our daughter?"

 

Ghost was curled up by the unlit fireplace, but she rose to come over and get petted upon the head before retreating. The direwolf was tired too. The crowd had frightened and then exhausted her. Not the least had been the need to restrain Nymeria, who was a hair away from being sent to the kennels. Likely Arya was relieved that she was to sit with the wolves tonight rather than attend the feast anyway. Oberyn knew he was as happy to bring no child before the Usurper that the man was aware of. As it was, Oberyn was pleased that Arya and the wolves had been over all of the accomodations. Several mechanisms for spying were found and subverted.

 

"The babe's fine. I'm just so  _ tired _ ."

 

Oberyn accepted this as the truth. If  _ anyone _ , man or woman, didn't notice his hands sliding over their skin as he peeled their clothing away, then they absolutely had to be exhausted. That she let him tuck her beneath a thin sheet naked with no protest was yet another confirmation of her exhaustion. She had continued with the hesitancy she'd displayed towards sleeping in the nude that had begun after Edmure Tully's ignorant jape at her expense. Oberyn found himself scowling and his mind twisting to find a reason to excuse Lyarra from the feast without revealing his wife's pregnancy. Unfortunately he found none.

 

" _ Rest _ ." He instructed instead, intent on her getting the full two hours he'd allotted.

 

"The King is not what I expected." She responded instead, her voice upset and half-asleep. "He's nothing like Father's stories."

 

"Mayhaps one day your Father will realize that as well."

 

"I misliked how he looked at me."

 

Oberyn remained silent. He debated, for a moment, going back out into the solar and calling Daemon in to help him out of his plate. Instead he dragged a chair over and sat. Resting his elbows on his knees, he listened to his wife speak.

 

"Oberyn?" Lyarra opened her eyes and looked up, and he could tell that she would get no more rest than he would.

 

"Yes?"

 

"I've been mistaken for my aunt before, by the surprised or the drunk. Lord Bolton did it once, and Lord Manderly swore I gave him a terrible fright last year when he was visiting Winterfell and I came upon him at night on a dark stair in a white dress." Lyarra went on. "None of them looked at me as the King does."

 

Oberyn considered his answer well, and then recalled the difficulties he'd already caused by treating his young wife too much as an age and not enough as a wife.

 

"It is well-known that the King remains in love with his dead betrothed. He laments her loss nearly as much as he resents the Queen he gained."

 

"I cannot believe he did that." Lyarra curled up a bit in bed, one hand absentmindedly going down to rest over her belly as she spoke. She was visibly upset. "He just - he _utterly_ _humiliated_ his wife. Oberyn, you're here to represent your brother. Prince Doran is the next highest ranking man in Westeros after the King. Slighting Queen Cersei publically…."

 

"The King makes a most gallant knight, does he not?" Oberyn sneered.

 

"Sansa will be disappointed by my next letter, I fear." Lyarra lamented, then looked up, her gray eyes unhappy. "He didn't introduce his Heir, either. He remembered Arya, after a while, and asked after Bran since he didn't know if Ser Brynden had decided to come for the tourney or not. He didn't introduce Prince Joffrey even after Arya was introduced."

 

"No." That had been interesting. "He did not."

 

"How old is Lord Tywin?"

 

"Not as old as he looks." Oberyn felt his lips turn up in a pleased snarl of a smile at Lyarra's observation. "The Plague affected him more than I had heard."

 

"What do you intend to do?"

 

He could hear the caution in her controlled voice and breathed out, leaning down. Pressing a kiss against her check and humming in pleasure when she turned to catch his lips, he slid his hand down to join hers. Petting both her fingers and her belly, Oberyn sighed and admitted the difficulty of it.

 

"Nothing, unfortunately. Watch.  _ Listen _ ." He huffed out a breath. "My infamous recklessness must bow to your safety and that of our babe. Somewhere in Sunspear, my brother is sitting and smiling smugly, having thought of that along with every other niggling detail when he required I stop and break bread with the Usurper."

 

Lyarra managed a thin smile, but that was all.

 

"There's more on your mind, Wife."

 

"You like the bond better now that you've more control over it."

 

"Yes." Oberyn admitted. "Though I still resent how you adapted so quickly. I, as your sister must constantly remind us all, am not so young as you are. Shouldn't my experience have allowed me to master what is Marked between us more quickly than you? Yet it's taken me moons to grow even somewhat confident in reading your moods and within days you were reading me like a favored poem."

 

"I prefer histories."

 

Oberyn grinned down at her jape, the cloud of anger and hate billowing inside him lessening a little as they spoke. His mind turned to the babe, the feast, and the Usurper. He came to a decision. If it was based on a mix of petty vengeance, cruelty, and honest concern, at least the latter played some small role.

 

"The feast will have dancing, no doubt, but I would have you refuse. Stay close to me. I will give you ample reason."

 

"That's ominous." Lyarra looked up, nervously and then sat up upon the bed wrapped in the sheet. "Oberyn, precisely what do you mean?"

 

"You should be resting."

 

"I  _ can't _ rest with that look on your face. Rickon looks like that right before we find something  _ awful _ stuffed inside his toy chest. Tell me what you meant."

 

"I mean to dissuade the King with my passion for you. If an open display of how satisfied we are does not turn his longing aside, then at least I am ever at hand to keep the drunken oaf away from you."

 

"Oberyn, he's my father's best friend. He might look at me, but - I mean, surely the King wouldn't  _ do _ anything inappropriate."

 

"He already inappropriately waved aside the courtesies of rank and publically snubbed his Queen and only Heir, Lyarra, and the man was at least mostly sober while doing so." His hate came crashing down with his memories and he flexed his hands roughly inside his gauntlets. "Do not underestimate what a man who dismissed the broken bodies of murdered infants as  _ dragonspawn _ is capable of."

 

Lyarra paused and swallowed, then nodded with a shiver.

 

"I don't believe it will be necessary, but maybe it's for the best to make it clear our marriage is happy." Lyarra shot him a cautious look and tightened the sheet around her breasts. "Oberyn, how clear do you intend to make it? I don't want to be the subject of mockery. We've discussed this."

 

Her infernal shyness. Oberyn wished this was one of the times it was cute. It was, however, not. He dragged his chair forward and leaned closer to her, raising an eyebrow.

 

"Mayhaps would could practice?"

 

"Not in plate armor." She shot him a look suspicious enough that it made him grin.

 

"True, not the  _ easiest _ thing to work around, though it can be done." Oberyn leaned forward and received a kiss. "Mayhaps a pleasure saved for the tourney?"

 

"If you're very good, perhaps." His wife gave him a wolfish grin. "Or as a reward for winning?"

 

Oberyn took a moment at that point to work on that grin with his own lips. It progressed into something less toothy but no less playful. He soon found himself with a lapful of woman. Not as comfortable as it could be, given his plate, but still pleasant. Lyarra was light enough and small enough that he could settle her across his thighs without her leaning against his codpiece and pressing the steel painfully down on him.

 

"You still haven't said precisely what you're going to do at the banquet."

 

"I am going to make it clear that I am very much pleased with my beautiful young wife and the Mark the Gods have given me." Lyarra shot him a questioning look and he shrugged. "If I must have a wife, Lyarra, I could not have chosen better. Mayhaps I'd have chosen to expand your horizons yet further than what the Mark allows-."

 

"I am entirely satisfied with my current horizons." Lyarra rolled her eyes at him and her eyes became earnest in the way of the Starks. "I never wanted more than a good husband and the Gods were generous enough to bring me one far beyond what I hoped for."

 

Oberyn felt warmth spread out through his chest and kissed her again. After a while she pulled back and he could feel her nervousness.

 

"Yes?"

 

"You will not be too forward."

 

"Far more than I have been on our journey whenever we stopped at castles upon the way." Oberyn replied bluntly and felt her unease. "Think of how we are when it is just Ser Arron and Gwyn around us, Lyarra. Such as when we took the day to rest the horses and she instructed us on the fine art of rock hunting."

 

That was a good memory. The little Westerlands lady had opened up that day between the Twins and Riverrun. A tumbling tributary of one of the Trident's arms had cut through their path with water no higher than Oberyn's hip at the deepest and most of its width only ankle or shin deep. Coming from the Westerlands as it was, the stream's bed was rocky, instead of muddy for once and Gwyn had been delighted when they'd camped early and nearby at Edmure's insistence that the ladies needed rest.

 

Bran and Arya and even the Tully Heir had been surprised and enthusiastic when Gwyn had returned from a walk by the river holding a handful of pale rocks in one hand and another set streaked with color. After that Oberyn had been happy for the lesson in hunting for agates. Such stones were common enough in the Westerlands that many lords allowed their smallfolk to search for them on their lands at set times during the year as part of celebrations and such, so the young blonde could readily identify them.

 

Oberyn himself was ever curious. He enjoyed learning new things, and there was a great deal of fun to be had wandering barefoot through a creek. Not the least in watching Lady Gwyn once again rescue a small river snake from Ghost's eager teeth. He'd already determined that he was going to have to talk to Lyarra about retraining the direwolf's urge to kill serpents. In Dorne, it would get the animal killed of snakebite and if it didn't, he would have to endure a great many annoying jests over the habit.

 

More than that, however, the day preceded Lyarra's intense embarrassment at the unthinking trout's jape at her expense. With everyone else occupied and Ned Stark sprawled on the bank pretending to watch his children while he snored in the shade, Oberyn had enjoyed his wife at her most free. They'd traded kisses in the sun and Lyarra had shamelessly run her hands through his hair and leaned into his caresses.

 

Lyarra pictured that day in her mind and he could feel her struggling with the happiness of the memory and behaving so in front of the court. Oberyn decided it was a good time to breach a topic of discussion that could not wait. Indeed, it shouldn't have waited as long as it had, but he'd been too occupied in wrestling his temper to do his duty on the subject.

 

"Lyarra, in this as in all else, we must appear as a united before the eyes of the world." Oberyn went on. "It is one thing to argue in privacy, or in front of a a trusted few as your father's party and mine. Here, in Sunspear, and before the eyes of strangers and my brother's bannermen, we cannot be divided. I have no small number of enemies and my House does as well. My wife must bring House Martell strength, not weakness and division. Mellario already did that enough for one generation."

 

"She was your brother's wife?"

 

"Yes." Oberyn breathed out slowly, pushing old hate aside and resting his head on Lyarra's as she settled in against his shoulder. How she could be comfortable against his armor he did not know, but if she was, he wasn't going to argue with her. "He took a tour of Essos as a young man and met an exotic, beautiful young woman from Norvos who was enchanted by the handsome foreigner with his quiet ways and deep thoughts. He was bewitched to be desired by a beauty who had no designs upon the throne he was to inherit."

 

"They loved each other?"

 

"Oh,  _ very _ much." Oberyn's tone was bitter. "But watching them taught me that happiness in marriage requires more than love. Mellario was the only daughter of a rich and noble merchant house. She was much used to getting her way, though not in any way cruel or petty. She was merely inflexible of thought and possessed a disdain for politics and practicality."

 

"Over time Mellario grew to feel trammeled by the differences between Norvos and Dorne and the expectations of a Ruling Prince's wife. She rebelled by refusing to do that which she did not wish to, such as keep court or accept and foster girls in her household." Oberyn reluctantly added. "Nor was it all her fault. Doran did not tell her that one of his unborn children was already promised to foster at House Yronwood because of my idiocy."

 

"There were already a great many cracks in their marriage by the time Quentyn left for Yronwood on his eighth nameday, but they only got worse after that. Doran withdraws when he is hurt, but Mellario was sensitive and stung and furious at his refusal to comfort her. Their fights grew worse until Mellario finally threatened her own life should he send Arianne to be fostered… then, having discovered that threats against herself hurt Doran as terribly as his silence hurt her, she employed them with more regularity as the years went by. It was as much a relief to Doran as a grief when she left not long after Tyrstane was born."

 

"Your poor brother." Lyarra's upset was clear through their bond and through her expression. "He never remarried? The Faith of the Seven doesn't annul marriages often, I know, but a foreign woman who did not share their faith and whose fall would put the Ruling Prince of Dorne onto the noble marriage market is not an ordinary thing."

 

"Had Doran wished it, an annulment would not have been hard to come by, but after that, who would want to remarry?"

 

Lyarra made a noise of distressed agreement and Oberyn went on.

 

"The point is that there was no  _ hiding _ the strife of their marriage. Most of Dorne chose to blame her because she was foreign." Oberyn felt her unease and carried on; it was necessary she feel so. It would drive the point he needed to make home. "It still weakened my brother's rule and hurt his reputation at times. Likewise, any division between us will be seen as a weakness to be exploited, Lyarra. If I go too far tonight, squeeze my wrist over my Mark, but do not let it be seen that you are upset."

 

Lyarra considered it and, though he saw her wrestling with the thought of anyone seeing a hint of the passion they shared publicly, she finally nodded. She also turned those gray eyes on him and Oberyn approved of their sharpness.

 

"You're talking about more than tonight, and more than in King's Landing or when we get to Sunspear." Lyarra went on. "This is for  _ the rest of our lives." _

 

"Yes."

 

"The Ledger." Lyarra went on, her tone quiet but firm. "You know I'm not happy with… any of that."

 

"And now is a good time to talk of it, or after the feast." He nodded around the room. "We'll have as much privacy here as anywhere in this cursed city. Thanks, of course, to Ghost."

 

The wolf cracked a red eye open and huffed a breath before rolling over into a new position.

 

"I know why we can't, logically, set this before the Master of Laws and the King." Lyarra went on, uncomfortable. "I even know that, if we told Father, he would tell them and so we can't share the knowledge Gwyn gave us about the Winter Fund and that Lord Tywin might have been so low as to steal from his own smallfolk's winter larder. I just feel that it's wrong, Oberyn. This is not how people are supposed to do things. Any of it, really, because it's all happening in the dark! Tradition aside, why can't the Guild just tell all of its members what might have happened and then demand to audit the Winter Fund themselves? If they did that in such a large group, Lord Twyin couldn't oppose them, could he?"

 

"He could call up his knights and go to war over his insulted honor, yes." Oberyn agreed with false pleasantness. "Or he could, realizing the game was up, take out a quick loan from the Iron Bank and hide what he's done. It might take a generation or two to pay it back, but he could likely manage it as long as another Plague did not come along to further kill off his miners and limit the Westerland's production. Assuming, of course, he did not have to continue to finance the King. Or, of course, he could invite the Guild leaders in to see the Winter Fund's faults and massacre them inside the Rock. Properly supplied, the Rock would outlast the winter, the peasants would starve, and he could emerge afterward when the Guild was weak and crush it once and for all and return to the power of the thrall mining of old."

 

Lyarra looked at him in horror.

 

"You might have missed what kind Master Tollen was famous for as an engineer, Lyarra, but I did not." Oberyn quietly told her. "He was Gwyn's grandfather's best friend, yes, but as a young man he was the one who did the math and built the apparatuses used to flood Castamere and drown every man, woman, and child within. He regrets it, but as your father gave his word to the Usurper, that man is bound to obey Lord Tywin's will until and unless he can prove that bloody Old Lion has betrayed his people."

 

Lyarra's horror expanded.

 

"Ruthlessness is a trait I know well, for I possess as much of it as Dorne possesses sand." Oberyn admitted grimly and curled a hand over her belly, sliding it beneath the sheet to feel the warm softness of her skin. "I've no sympathy or kindness for my enemies. You must remember that at every minute we are being watched by enemies as ruthless as that. They will be watching for weakness and it will be both ourselves and our child dead if they see the chance."

 

"Just knowing is dangerous." Lyarra finally agreed, and breathed out and rested a hand over his. "I'm a woman, they will never forget I was a bastard, and - and now I'm a mother as well. I'm  _ vulnerable _ and they'll use that."

 

"You're not without protection, Lyarra. I put a sword in your hand for more than my own pleasure, though I do enjoy your skill. You are surrounded by knights and guards of Dornish blood who are loyal to House Martell past torment and death." He pressed a kiss against her temple, then into the curls at the crown of her head. "And you are forgetting your husband. Some consider him a dangerous man."

 

Lyarra turned and looked at him, her serious face filled with understanding. She was not happy, he knew, to find her life shifted so. Mayhaps the more honest parts of her heart would always yearn for a husband like Greatjon Umber's son just as Oberyn yearned for Ellaria and the pleasures and delights of the lifestyle he'd chosen for himself. The Umber boy would have shown her nothing new in her life, and her horizons would have always ended in ice and honor, but he would have been what she knew and what she wanted.

 

"I'll give you hell in private from now on."

 

"What more could any husband want, darling?" He laughed softly and was rewarded when his wife rose from his lap and began to silently tug at his plate, offering to take Daemon's place in helping him out of his armor. "You've nearly an hour left, Lyarra,  _ rest _ ."

 

"I can't." She said simply. "So I might as well be useful."

 

Bowing to the inevitability of a Northerner on a quest to do something, he allowed her to help.

 

* * *

The Great Hall was splendid. Lyarra could no more fail to admire it than she could calm her disquiet over everything she had seen in the city itself. The riots of hungry smallfolk in a filthy city that had swaths burnt out or shuttered up and empty. It was strange and frightening and nothing like Lyarra had pictured King's Landing as being.

 

_ 'Dearest Sansa.'  _ Lyarra began mentally writing her next letter in her head.  _ 'King's Landing is an immense and sprawling place, but it's characterized mostly by a completely ineffective sewer system. The whole place smells worse than I can possibly describe, and the heat means it lingers upon you in an endless cloud of stench. The people are poor, hungry, and desperate to the point of desecrating the tombs of children for gold to buy a crust of bread.' _

 

That was without even touching on the the palace itself or the people inside. Lyarra had spent her marriage fighting between two images in her mind. One was of King Robert, Demon of the Trident, and her father's best friend. A laughing giant who was kind and generous off the battlefield and untouchable and mighty on it. The other image was of the Usurper, who encouraged shameful men to rape women and murder babes, and then rewarded those who did it rather than punish them for it. A man who had made Lyarra's own father swear that vile oath.

Neither of those images fitted the mental picture she now had in front of her as she approached the throne. Tables had been set up all around the open isle of the cavernous throne room, draped in fine fabrics and with costly plate set out for what seemed like an endless number of people. Lyarra would later learn that some five hundred of the court had been invited to dine. None of that mattered as she grappled with the reality of a fat, tired man sitting uncomfortably upon the enormous throne at the far end of the enormous room.

 

The Iron Throne itself lived up to the legends. Likely thirty feet high from its first step to the pinnacle of the fan of blades that made up the throne's back, the monstrosity was everything myth claimed it to be. Thousands of swords gleaming dully as old, melted steel often does or shimmering here and there as a Valyrian Steel blade meshed into the work caught and glowed in the construction of the high seat. Stairs were worked into the throne made of enmeshed blades and everywhere she looked, something sharp was waiting to catch and stab anyone foolish enough to approach the seat.

 

King Robert sat upon his throne in gold silks with black accents and embroidery. His tunic had been opened at the throat to let air in, and though it was cooler in the dimmer light of the Hall's crystal windows, he was perspiring. His thick black beard only poorly hid how his bull's neck had expanded into a double chin, and his black hair looked greasy where it was brushed back from his face beneath a crown of flared antlers. His bright blue eyes were dimmed simply by being bloodshot and he held an ale horn in his hand while he sat uncomfortably on his throne.

 

"Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell, second-born Prince of Dorne, son of the late Princess Arianne, younger brother of Ruling Prince Doran Martell approaches the Iron Throne with his Marked wife, Princess Lyarra Martell!"

 

The senschel from the courtyard had been replaced, Lyarra noticed. Now a man with graying blonde hair, red Lannister livery, and an annoyed expression to suggest that he had been assigned a job neither of his choosing nor suited to his rank bellowed in his place. He was at least doing a proper job of it.

 

If King Robert looked disturbingly dissipated, Lyarra's husband wouldn't have disappointed her ballad-loving sister at all. Oberyn had donned the gold silk shirt from their wedding next to his skin. This time, without his surcoat over it, Lyarra had a chance to truly admire the workmanship that went into it. The shirt had a red viper embroidered around the neck, just below where the high collar joined the rest of the garment. Lyarra had no idea how the garment was held closed until he'd showed her clever little copper wire hooks on the inside that clasped together invisibly.

 

Over this, her husband wore a robe that fell low against the calves of a pair of supple, heavy silk trousers cut slim against his long legs. The robe had no closures and was made of a coppery-orange silk satin with an incredibly rich sheen. Worked into a brocade with golden highlights, its pattern was an elaborate arabesque of the sort the Dornish seemed to favor. Holding the robe closed was a gold chased red leather belt, and hanging at his neck on a fine gold chain was a coral medallion carved in the shape of a red viper coiled around a golden spear. Leather sandals upon his feet nearly completed his look.

 

As a Prince of Dorne, Oberyn had the right to a circlet. Not a coronet, as his brother wore, but a circlet and his was as suited to him as possible. Wrapped in gleaming copper around his brow was a metal serpent. Clasped in its mouth and wrapped in its tail was the Martell Sun and Spear in gold. Her husband looked every inch a prince out of one of Sansa's songs, though one of the ones about dangerous royalty from foreign lands who tempted young maidens away to lives of strange luxury and foreign treasure. Lyarra had gotten in trouble more often than not for singing those for her sister even though it was Sansa herself who begged the Maester to show her where to find such songs in the library, and then begged her sister to sing them.

 

Lyarra hoped that she was not a disappointment next to her husband as she dropped into a curtsey of precisely the depth that Lady Jynessa had spent two moons drilling into her for this moment. Unbowed, Unbroken, Unbent; Lyarra didn't need to be a natural at the Game of Thrones to know that the Dornish would be slow to forgive her if she showed the King even an inch more courtesy than custom dictated in so public a moment.

 

Lyarra wore her wedding gown. She saw immediately that it was  _ not _ in fashion at the capitol. The Queen wore a gown like the one she'd worn when her husband snubbed her, only more elaborate. It had great wide, almost square sleeves and was a thing of multiple layers. More like a robe than a gown, Lyarra recalled that Gwyn had said she was copying fashions in Pentos. How Gwyn knew what was fashionable in Pentos, Lyarra was not sure, but Walda had confirmed it, so she had no reason to doubt their word.

 

Either way, the Queen was resplendent in layers of gold and crimson silk touched with spider-web fine Myrish lace. She wore a gold tiara fashioned in a rampant lion and a stag's antlers amidst a lobed knot of enmeshed braids nearly as large as the head it was perched on with a few carefully chosen waves of burnished gold falling down her back. A necklace of golden medallions featuring yet more lions lay heavy against her throat, set with jewels, and her fingers were heavy with rings and her wrists clasped in bracelets.

 

Lyarra's gown was like nothing in the room. All of the ladies she saw had copied the Queen to one extent or another. Yet Lyarra stood in her ivory gown, fitted close to her body, with its black train, and its neckline and sleeves in snug-fitting black lace dotted with white snowflakes. She had to work to keep her eyes straight ahead as the torch-light caused the crystals in the lace to send sparks of light and color into her eyes, and it made concentrating on offending no-one, nor stepping on her own hem, and matching Oberyn's pace comfortably even more difficult.

 

Lyarra dipped into a curtsey as she'd been taught while next to her, Oberyn offered a bow of precisely the required depth; not an iota more. Whispers fell like raindrops around them. Lyarra simply refused to sweat in nervousness even if her unbound curls made for a heavy cloak down her back. She raised her eyes to find the Queen's face hard and her expression displeased as she sat on the ornate gilded chair placed on one of the steps of the dias. Lyarra couldn't help noting that, even if the chair was as high and close to the throne as possible, the throne's construction meant that the Queen still sat far below her husband.

 

The King was sweating through his silks again. He sat uneasily and unhappily on the great iron seat. Again he stared at Lyarra with his bloodshot blue eyes tumultuous and carrying some emotion Lyarra couldn't name.

 

"Welcome." The King boomed. "We're glad to have Dorne as our guests in the capital and look forward to renewing relations between our Houses."

 

The statement was clearly rehearsed, and not thoughtfully so. It was reeled off in the King's deep voice and his eyes never once strayed from Lyarra to her husband, where they ought to have been.

 

"We are as honored to be here as  _ all _ guests before us have been." Oberyn's tone was respectful but held a lingering sharpness underneath casting a hint of deeper meaning to his words as he offered another bow. Lyarra curtseyed, and then they moved aside to where the most prominent members of the Dornish party already stood, not requiring a formal introduction to the court.

 

Lyarra relaxed slightly when she felt her husband's hand settle against the small of her back. A moment later, his arm curled around her waist, drawing her against his side. Grateful for the support and feeling a little weak with relief after the ordeal, she leaned against him. Absentmindedly she reached up to straighten his robes, running her hands down the front of his shirt to settle it in place as she watched her father step forward.

 

Her father, Lyarra noted in pride, looked every inch the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. The new and likely temporary senschel called out all of Lord Eddard's ranks and titles. Standing before the throne in his ivory silk surcoat with the gray direwolf of House Stark emblazoned on his chest and a dark gray cotton tunic so fine you could see shadows of the muscles on his arms beneath moving, her father was an impressive sight. If Oberyn was a Prince in every way, her father stood before the Iron Throne as the archetypal Northern Lord; a seasoned warrior in his prime, proven and powerful.

 

"It's been _ too damned long _ , Ned." The King lapsed out of formality to truly smile at his oldest friend. "Wherever I have a home or a table, House Stark is welcome there."

 

Then the King rose to his feet, carefully not touching the razor sharp arms of his throne.

 

"Now! Let the feast begin!"

 

The final tables were brought out and, as in Winterfell, guests were allowed to seat themselves as they would, though they must wait on the King. It was an unfortunate reality that Lyarra had only come to grips with reluctantly that all formal meals of her life were now chained firmly to the

High Table of whatever hall she was in. There would be no option of slipping down amongst friends halfway through a meal to escape resentful eyes or awkward conversation.

 

The High Table in the Great Hall of the Red Keep sat upon the bottom step of the dias, which had been stretched out until it was all but a stage. Three smaller steps led up to it. The table itself was U-shaped, made of five parts, and servants scurried in to set it up. Chairs were brought out, finely carved and with gilded decorations carrying the Baratheon and occasionally Lannister arms. Lyarra _did_ _not_ imagine that it was an accident that her husband's chair featured a lion. It definitely did not improve his mood.

 

The King sat at the center of the table with the Queen to his left. On his right, against protocol, sat Lyarra's father. Oberyn was seated beside Lord Eddard. Lyarra was seated beside Oberyn. To her right was an empty chair that remained so. She would later learn it was meant for Lord Arryn and the King had declared it remain empty in case his party arrived during the feast.

 

To the left of the Queen there were three chairs. Two were draped in black velvet. To Lyarra's surprise the Crown Prince was nowhere to be seen, though a chair more ornate than the others sat open for him along with golden plate and cup. After this awkward space, the Lady Jynessa sat closest to the Queen in all of her silken, careful refinement. Lady Myria sat next to Lady Jynessa. Lord Tywin sat next to Lady Myria.

 

"Prince Oberyn."

 

A stuffy, displeased male voice brought Lyarra's attention back to her side of the table as Oberyn led her into her seat. The King was leaning over to speak to Lyarra's father, so he was not a concern at the moment. Instead a heavyset man she knew to be Lord Mace Tyrell, Warden of the South and Lord Paramount of the Reach, was moving to sit in the chair past the one meant for the Hand of the King.

 

"Lord Tyrell, what an  _ unexpected _ pleasure." Oberyn's smile was all mocking, annoyed courtesy as he turned and bowed. "And the Lady Olenna, always an honor."

 

One of their own servants had already set out the silver-stained drinking vessels and utensils that Oberyn insisted on. Out of the corner of her eye, Lyarra watched as servants began to stagger in with gilt platters heaped with the various courses of the feast. The rest of her attention was focused on the bearded brunette lord currently glaring at her husband and the more moderate expression of dislike on the dowager's lined face.

 

"Yes, well… Willas sends his regrets. He wanted to speak to you personally and asked me to convey his personal invitation to Highgarden at your first convenience." The heavyset man offered gruffly as he held a seat for his mother to sink into and then sat heavily in his own.

As he was seated, Lyarra caught a quick movement under the table at shin height. Lord Mace winced. Lyarra realized with some amazement that the Lord Paramount's mother had just whacked him on the shin with her cane.

 

"Right, yes, and I want to convey my House's deep gratitude for the speed at which your brother sent the goats. Your friendship was appreciated." The fat man added, then he turned his eyes on Lyarra and his expression widened slightly as the man's golden-brown eyes slipped down over her face and body. " _ This _ is your wife?"

 

"The Gods would have it so." Oberyn slid gracefully into his own seat, his arm sliding across Lyarra's shoulders to grip the opposite edge of her seat, drawing their chairs together until the wood clacked as it met. His hand delivered a lingering caress to her hip and back as he withdrew it and Lyarra found herself relaxing into the touch. All across the strings and lines the Gods had drawn between them, she could feel his miserable anger at being in the Red Keep at all, his dislike of the man he called ' _ The Fat Flower', _ and general annoyance at the situation. Her nervousness decreased as, without thinking, she realized that the contact provided him some relief and distraction. Lyarra's worries about being a bastard draped in false panoply subsided as her attention turned to her husband's needs.

 

"Two different sets of Gods have been generous to House Martell." Lady Olenna stated waspishly, her own dark eyes sharp as she leaned forward and squinted. "Let me have a look at your girl… Well, you're certainly a Stark, though I don't know where you got those cheekbones."

 

"My mother, I must presume." Lyarra answered as lightly as she was able, recalling Lady Myria's advice to turn aside her hurt over the subject with jests. She wasn't naturally inclined to such, but they'd spent hours on the journey with Gwyn playing the role of sharp-tongued noble and probing and poking at her so that she'd have a supply of such responses to draw on.

 

"Any hope of a hint as to who that was?" Lady Olenna asked, raising her eyebrows up into the lines of the veil tucked into her headdress as she continued to scrutinize Lyarra's appearance. "One could almost believe those ridiculous rumors about Lady Ashara, looking at you."

 

"Mother…" Lord Mace seemed more embarrassed than shocked by his mother's words, but Lyarra found she was grateful that her first challenge in court was being more blunt than subtle.

 

"My Lord Father doesn't consider the subject important, and I'd rather focus on the future than the past."

 

"Well, if your husband's  _ past _ is anything to go by, you'll happily be a mother in no time." Lord Mace made what was obviously an attempt to rescue the conversation, but just succeeded in making it more awkward.

 

"I promise, I will give it my  _ best _ effort." Oberyn stated dryly as he sipped his wine and Lyarra realized that she had a problem.

 

She didn't see any pitchers going about that were filled with anything other than wine or ale. Lyarra had found that both were sure to upset her stomach; the baby just would not tolerate even the lightest of hard ciders. Even the heavy smell of ale and wine that was beginning to cling to the air was making her a little queasy. She caught her husband's eyes and he winked. A moment later one of their own servants stepped forward and, silver pitcher in hand, poured what looked like pale golden wine into her cup. Taking a sip from her own chalice she found it tasted similar, but far lighter, and relaxed to enjoy the unfermented grape juice she'd been brought.

 

"I'm as eager to meet all of my husband's current daughters as I am to have a child of my own." Lyarra slid a hand down to squeeze her husband's knee.

 

"Even if half are your elder?" Lady Olenna asked and Lyarra shrugged.

 

"Given the rarity of women interested in arms I look forward to having so many to enjoy the practice yard with. At least I can rest assured they won't coddle me during sword training."

 

"How'd you find a woman north of the Red Mountains who trains with arms?" Lord Mace asked Oberyn directly.

 

"Several Houses in the North train their ladies in arms." Oberyn smirked. "House Mormont in particular is fascinating, and I wouldn't challenge the ladies of House Umber to anything, lightly."

 

Lyarra grinned in memory and Lord Mace looked at her curiously.

 

"There's a story from some two years ago involving my brother, Lord Robb, and Lord Theon Greyjoy as well as Lord Umber's eldest daughter." Lyarra explained. "It involves an arm wrestling match, a cask of ale on wager, and snipe hunting."

 

Oberyn let out an irritated scoffing noise even as the Lord of the Reach frowned.

 

"What's a snipe? Is it some Northern beast that's especially fierce?"

 

"It is a trick they play on unwary Southrons, Lord Tyrell." Oberyn drawled and shot Lyarra a sharp look that she met with a pert smile. "There is indeed no more such a thing as a snipe than there is a snark. They merely find it  _ amusing _ to turn a party of unwary guests out at night in the Wolfswood to find the creature then  _ 'lose' _ you in the brush and vanish, leaving you to find your way back to Winterfell in the snow."

 

Lyarra couldn't help it, she laughed. Beside her Lady Olenna's lips turned up slightly and Lord Mace Tyrell looked wickedly delighted.

 

"Father  _ did _ punish Robb for setting that up, and Bran for being the one to lure you into it."

 

"So, the Stark children pulled that on you, Prince Oberyn?" The Fat Flower was grinning. "The Red Viper himself?"

 

"I applaud them for their gall while contemplating my revenge." Oberyn offered a fanged smile in return. "They will surely visit their dear sister eventually, and Dornish weather provides its own potential for amusements."

 

"Just be careful, Robb freckles and burns terribly." Lyarra admonished her husband and perked up as the food well and truly arrived; suddenly she was famished rather than suffering an uneasy stomach and she nodded to the server to give her servings of several things.

 

"Princess!"

 

The King's bellow caused Lyarra to jump, surprised, and she turned to see his eyes had turned from her father and their conversation to fix on her.

 

"You've a healthy appetite." He praised her and Lyarra flushed.

 

"I find that in my excitement to see the capital, I didn't eat today, Your Grace."

 

"Normally starve your wives, Prince Oberyn?" The King turned a scowl towards her husband and Lyarra felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

 

She immediately put her hand back on her husband's knee and squeeze beneath the table, rubbing her thumb comfortingly over the joint. Oberyn was walking a knife's edge of self-control already and had been all day. Placing him near to her father was an invitation to annoyance for both men, but it was no bad thing after months of travel. While the Lord of Winterfell and the Red Viper were by no means fond of each other, their sharp-tongued habits had become a kind of accepted coexistence. Mace Tyrell just irritated Oberyn and he seemed to actually  _ like _ the man's mother, though it was obvious she held him in very little regard.

 

Lyarra still hadn't a good mental picture of that situation. She knew from Oberyn that his dislike for Mace Tyrell was deeply rooted. He blamed the man for putting an unready boy into a tourney. Oberyn, she knew, valued his friendship with Willas Tyrell greatly, and was still distressed to have crippled the younger man. Olenna Tyrell, Oberyn had mentioned, disliked Oberyn for the same reason as he'd been the ultimate source of her favorite grandson's terrible injury.

 

The situation with the man Oberyn referred to as the  _ 'Usurper' _ didn't need to be thought on. It was profoundly obvious. It was also  _ dangerous _ .

 

"I was always raised to understand that wives are _women_ , and being such, _human_ _beings_ who have the intelligence to regulate their own meals." Oberyn drawled in reply and nodded to a server to add another portion of pheasant to his plate. "As for forgetting to eat today, I am afraid I can offer mine wife no advice. I have been equally forgetful."

 

The King snorted.

 

"I'd apologize for the smallfolk, but they gave you a proper greeting, Princess." The King went on speaking to her, his eyes red but bright as he took a long drink from his ale horn. "You looked beautiful with the flowers in your hair, though I like it better down."

 

Lyarra flushed, not sure what to make of so direct a compliment. Before she could respond she felt Oberyn's annoyance sharpen into a kind of weaponized glee. Then, slowly, he reached up and carded his fingers through her hair, toying with her curls and then settling his hand at the back of her neck to curl the calloused pad of his thumb over the shell of her ear.

 

"You've a man of discernment, I see, Your Grace. One should hardly be surprised, however, when your own Queen is a beauty of such wide renown. Such joy she must bring into your life."

 

The King said nothing, but the Queen's attention had been drawn away from where she was visibly snubbing Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria to talk instead to another lady who was currently waiting on her.

 

"The Gods have been generous to give you to each other." The Queen agreed with a sensual smile directed at Lyarra's husband. "And I thank you for your kind words, Your Grace. With a son nearly grown, it is a pleasure to hear so accomplished a man still thinks  _ my _ beauty mentions merit."

 

Lyarra was surprised. Very few women would bother to flirt with a Marked man any more than men gave her more than a passing glance to take in her looks. The Marks made it so that neither could lay willingly with another, after all, and the Queen had to know that.

 

Worse than her surprise, however, was the flare of jealousy Lyarra felt. Oberyn could be difficult. He was hard to understand at times. He was always himself with all of the complex issues that brought with it. What he had been, however, for their time together, was  _ hers _ in a way nothing else had been in her life. Seeing this poised woman, golden and glorious and bedecked in jewels, who was so much closer in age and experience, offer him such a smile filled her with a sudden surge of possessiveness.

 

"The Gods have indeed been kind."

 

Lyarra found the words slipping out of her mouth and, without thought, she reached down and brought Oberyn's left hand up to press a kiss against the white weirwood of his ring the way she'd seen two of their Dornish servants do.

 

Oberyn's other hand, lingering on her shoulder and tracing the bare bits of skin available through the openwork of the lace covering her shoulders, slid back into her hair. Despite a momentary flash of embarrassment, Lyarra overall was pleased when he used the grip to turn her head and leaned down for a kiss. He did not make too much of a production of it, thank the Gods, but it was a slow press of lips that was enjoyable.

 

She couldn't quite bring herself to immediately turn back to the whole room, all of which had to be watching. Instead she took a moment to smooth where his collar had been bent by twisting in his seat, and straightening the fall of his robe over his chest. Oberyn's arm slid down to curl around her back warmly, his hand curled around her hip and caressing her there with slow circles of his fingers that had her stifling a shiver. When she looked up, the King was scowling into his alehorn and her father was frowning at his plate. The Queen's expression was unreadable.

 

"Lyarra has been a balm to my soul with my loses." Oberyn went on and nodded. "The Plague was not kind to any of us."

 

The Queen's expression rapidly became readable. Her lips thinned and she sat up straighter. Something thin and brittle came into the bright green of her eyes.

 

"Indeed, I'd heard that you lost a daughter as well. My condolences." Queen Cersei drawled.

 

"You lost a woman, too." King Robert interjected, his tone suggesting he was looking for trouble and Lyarra felt her stomach clench.

 

A wave of grief mingled with rage welled up over the connection she shared with Oberyn. Lyarra felt a sudden spike of dislike for the King. Whatever he was thinking when he looked at her and saw her aunt, it was  _ cruel _ to bring up Ellaria Sand. Her husband had loved her truly and would have made her his wife if it had been at all possible politically. Watching the woman he loved slowly turn to stone had been a torture she couldn't describe. Feeling and knowing the pain her husband felt was her only justification for the words that slipped out of her own mouth next.

 

"Your Grace should understand my Prince's pain, as I know you've also lost one you cared for deeply in the past."

 

The King's eyes snapped to her face and Lyarra sat straight, rubbing her hand comfortingly over her husband's leg, squeezing the muscle of his thigh. It wasn't meant to be sensual, though in another context it would have been. She just wanted to avert whatever storm was building in her husband. She did, though it was not in any manner she would have chosen.

 

"I did." King Robert agreed, his eyes fierce. "Your Aunt Lyanna was - she was beautiful. Everything I ever wanted before that damned dragon. In my dreams, I kill him every night. A  _ thousand _ deaths will still be less than he deserves."

 

"And so you must surely understand how I treasure my princess so." Oberyn interjected smoothly, his hand sliding from her hip to claim her left hand as he had earlier. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles near the immense ruby whose weight was now a familiar comfort on her fingers. Then another on the palm of her hand, and yet one more, lingering, on the Mark on her wrist. The skin felt oversensitive there, throbbing, as the Mark responded the the whirlwind of complex emotions swirling between them. "For surely the Gods were so kind as to grace  _ you _ with your own golden bride to soothe your spirit and fill your House with joy."

 

"That's one way to look at it." The King scoffed outright at the idea and Lyarra had to stifle a wince as she thought of Lord Mace Tyrell and his mother and the rest of the court watching avidly.

 

"My Septa always told me that the Gods grant us the mercies we deserve in life." The Queen attended her wine glass closely as she added her own venom to that in the air.

 

"Tell me of your hunt for the brigands, Your Grace." At that moment her father chose to interrupt, his silence broken and Lyarra was intensely grateful as the King's attention turned.

 

"It was a fine chase, Ned, and-."

 

Whatever the King was about to say was interrupted by the return of the awkward senshel from the courtyard. He visibly scampered into place as if driven to by wild dogs. Then, with a wince, he did his job as poorly as before.

 

"His Grace, Joffrey Baratheon, Heir to the Iron Throne!"

 

The prince entered attired much as his mother in scarlet and gold silk. His hair was curled and waved in a way that looked artificial to Lyarra's eyes, and his lips were set in a petulant smirk as he walked forward. He was, to Lyarra's eyes, a handsome young man… but perhaps a little  _ too _ handsome. She couldn't help thinking that, if you'd put him in a frock, he'd have made a more convincing princess than prince. He certainly resembled his mother enough for it.

 

"Well, boy where have you been?" The King boomed, turning and scowling at his son.

 

"I was doing my duty as your son and Heir, Father." The boy looked even more smug.

 

"My son's duty was to show up on time for a damned feast and not embarrass me in front of the kingdom." King Robert glared and stood up, ale sloshing from his cup. "Take your damned seat beside your mother and stop making a spectacle of yourself."

 

Oberyn snorted and Lyarra silently agreed with her husband. The King was not one to talk about spectacles. He was visibly drunk and the page tasked with keeping his horn full of ale likely had done more running than any brigand he'd chased.

 

_ "But, Father!"  _ The boy protested, now looking alarmed even as he rallied his pride to grin. "I've a gift for you."

 

Four guards had come in with the Prince. All were large men, though one stood a handspan taller than the largest. In darkly stained armor the man was massive, with broad shoulders. He was also was distracting in that he had a terrible burn scar covering half his face and head, identifying him instantly as Sandor Clegane from Gwyn's story of flight from Casterly Rock. It was he that held a small tin bucket, the kind used to carry ash. When the Prince spoke he handed it to the golden youth.

 

"You need not worry about the wagging tongues of merchants in the next Small Council meeting, Father." Prince Joffrey proclaimed gleefully. "I had the list fetched from Lord Arryn's desk, you see, while he was out. I can now safely say their tongues will wag no more."

 

With that, he spilled the bucket's contents out onto a broad, slightly dished, silver tray he'd had another servant place at his feet. Twenty or thirty  _ tongues _ , for anyone who'd butchered an animal could hardly mistake what they were, fell out. They landed in a bloody heap, falling over each other and squelching disgustingly into the tray. Raw muscle slopped about and Lyarra heard several other women shriek as she locked her jaw as the food she'd managed to eat threatened to come back up. Beside her Oberyn hissed through clenched teeth and went still while Lord Tyrell let out a cry of shock.

 

There was a beat of silence from the King, his face white with shock before going red with fury.

 

_ "Get that disgusting display out of my sight!"  _ Robert Baratheon roared and, to Lyarra's shock, stepped up onto his chair and then onto the table.

 

A platter containing a roast goose went flying, plate clattered onto the floor as his weight caused the whole high table to rattle alarmingly. The Kingsguard, on duty, rushed forward towards the King and Heir, though to protect whom Lyarra had no idea. Despite his drunkenness, however, the King didn't falter. He stepped down off the table with a colossal noise and bore down on his Heir, who was now backing away towards the guards, cowering and fearful.

 

"But, Father, I wanted to help!" The boy was pleading. "They were  _ slandering _ you, Father, saying you couldn't manage the brigands or bring food into the city!"

 

_ "Don't you touch him!" _ The Queen shrieked and rushed around the table, only to be caught by her father and one of the Kingsguard.

 

"Get him out of here, confine him to his rooms!" The King didn't, ultimately, touch his Heir. Instead he pointed at where the boy had recoiled into Clegane's chest. "He's not to leave until I say."

 

Oberyn had meanwhile risen, as had everyone. If the King stood, then no-one was allowed a seat. It created more havoc as people bumped into each other and two insensate ladies and one elderly gentleman who'd apparently fallen over were rushed out by servants and family members. Lyarra felt her husband's hands reach out, taking her by the waist and forcing herself behind him where the rest of his party had pushed forward from the lower tables to either meet them or help escort Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria back to their Princess.

 

"The feast is over!" The King roared, his expression still furious as he looked at the man rushing the tray of human tongues away. "Varys!"

 

"Yes, Your Grace?" A smooth and simpering voice, too high to seem masculine asked with a nervous lilt and a bald man in flowing, colorful silken robes stepped forward.

 

"Get me that list." The King said, his grim tone turning tired. "Ned?"

 

"I'm here." Her father stepped forward, his face set as stone and twice as unreadable, though he rested a hand on his friend's shoulder discretely as the room began to clear.

 

"Lord Tywin, you come as well."

 

A figure in the gleaming white armor of the Kingsguard opened a side door at that point and Lyarra watched as a tall man of erect carriage walked in wearing armor and a weary expression. His hair was white, but dense, and his eyes were blue. Seeing the falcon on his surcoat, Lyarra realized that Jon Arryn had returned to King's Landing.

 

"Lyarra."

 

Oberyn's voice, spoken quietly at her ear jolted her back to her own situation. She found herself surrounded by the familiar knights of their party with Oberyn at her side. A dagger she'd had no idea he was carrying vanished back into his coat.

 

"The King has dismissed his guests." Oberyn said almost lightly. "I think it time we retired."

 

More grateful than she could possibly say not to be part of the party currently gathering around her father, the King, and the Hand, Lyarra took her husband's arm gratefully and let him lead her away. She couldn't get the sound of the prince's gift being overturned into a heap out of her head. All she could think about was what Sansa's reaction would have been, and recalling a few sighs heard over the years in regards to the King's Heir, she came to a decision to do something she'd never done before.

 

Lyarra would not rest that night before she'd written a letter and sent a raven to Lady Catelyn Stark.

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are discussed. A fat king dances. Letters are read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Talk of Joffrey's behavior from the last chapter. Talk of how Rickard Stark died.

**Chapter Twenty-One - 297 A.C.**

 

Oberyn awoke with a jolt to an empty bed, cold sweat pooling at his back and beading over his face and neck. He looked around at the richly paneled walls of the elaborate guest suite he was in and found little to distinguish from his nightmare for a bare moment as he recognized his accommodations as part of the Red Keep. The past and present were tangled together in his mind, both noxious and violent as he kicked aside the sheets and hastily rose.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

"In here, Your Grace!" Lady Walda's squeaky voice rose to greet him from the small solar attached to the bedchamber.

 

"All's well?"

 

"Everything's fine." Lyarra's voice rose to insist, though he caught a wave of nauseous feeling from his soulmate that explained why she was no longer abed.

 

Taking a moment to breathe and push the demons of his dream away, Oberyn took in his current state of undress and rubbed a hand over his face. Heading to the chamber pot he relieved his bladder, and then made use of the pitcher and basin to wash the sweat of his nightmares away. Once he was somewhat presentable he found the silk dressing robe that had been Lyarra's insistent gift to him. She'd been rather aggrieved by his lack of the garment, and Oberyn had been forced to laughingly confirm that his habit of wandering around his tent and quarters naked was his own lack of inhibition and not a part of Dornish culture.

 

Smoothing a hand over the black silk of the sash that tied the robe closed, he admired the work that had gone into it. Lyarra had sewn it herself as a gift even while she was angry with him, after Riverrun and Edmure Tully's ignominious comment. Wrapping the dark wine colored silk around himself and smirking down at the black, scale-like pattern woven into the fabric, Oberyn quit the bedchamber to find his wife.

 

He expected to see her curled up on a settee, nursing the slight nausea that had plagued her for the last few weeks with peace and quiet. Instead Oberyn found his wife crouched on the floor in front of the fire, leaning over a glazed basin. Walda crouched beside her, holding Lyarra's thick mane of curls back from her face with one hand. Her other wide, plump hand was very competently supporting Lyarra's forehead.

 

"Lyarra?" Oberyn was beside her on the floor in an instant, brushing her lady-in-waiting aside to support his wife.

 

"It's just morning sickness, Prince Oberyn." Walda told him with cheerful matter-of-factness. "Normally it'd be getting a bit better now, rather than getting worse, but stress does aggravate it. So does an empty stomach. Gwyn went to fetch Lyarra some broth and thin toast."

 

Lyarra started to say something as well, but the words were lost as she began to dry heave. The half-banished nightmare that had been a mix of his sister's fate and the display that the Heir to the throne had indulged in the night before hovered in the back of his mind, adding to his unease. Compounding that was the contrast between the slight malaise that Ellaria had suffering through during two of her pregnancies and his memories of the debilitating sickness that had descended on his sister. _Intellectually_ he knew that every pregnancy and every woman was different, and most were driven to vomit during their pregnancies with no harm done to either the mother or the babe. _Emotionally_ , however, the differences left him on edge.

 

"I suppose you must have seen it quite a lot." Oberyn ventured to the brassy blonde girl kneeling next to him, still holding Lyarra's hair back. She offered him a smile that was bright and wry at once.

 

"A hazard of my bloodline, but also an advantage." Walda shrugged. "I may be a maiden, but I saw my first babe born when I was four, was allowed in the birthing room at six, and was helping deliver by ten namedays old, Your Grace."

 

"Then I hope to have an able assistant on hand when this little one makes her appearance."

 

"Lyarra told me you'd delivered your daughters, Your Grace." Walda beamed at him with a kind of malicious glee. "My male kin's happy enough to engender children, but I've seen them flee like whipped dogs when someone's waters break."

 

Oberyn sniffed in disdain at that and gently stroked his free hand up and down his wife's side. Lyarra groaned and very slowly sat up. Walda transferred care of Lyarra's hair to him and leaned to the side to offer his wife a cup of water and a damp rag. Oberyn slid away when Lyarra nudged him to and watched silently as his wife washed her mouth out, wiped her face, and then went to rise to her feet. He proved his use by sliding an arm around her to support her as she made her way shakily towards a green silk settee covered in thick, plush upholstery provided along with the other luxurious furnishings in the suite's solar.

 

"Would you step outside for a moment, Lady Walda?" Oberyn asked politely.

 

He got a brief curtsey as she agreed and took the basin to empty it of Lyarra's sick as she left. He was pleased to note that while he was still firmly _Your_ _Grace_ and _Prince_ , Lyarra had succeeded in claiming the girl's friendship well enough that she was known by her name in private situations. That Gwyn had also permitted the girl the same privilege spoke well of the loyalty binding all of his wife's small household together.

 

"I'm sorry I didn't wake you, but you slept so ill last night." Lyarra answered his question before he asked it, leaning her head and shoulders back against the bolster as she looked up at him with tired gray eyes.

 

"My dreams did not improve in an empty bed." Oberyn smoothed a hand over Lyarra's bare shoulder and then down her back over the thin, sleeveless cotton shift she was wearing.

 

"Sorry."

 

"In this place sweet dreams are too much to ask even your presence to provide me." Oberyn dismissed her worries and reached down, very gently petting a hand over her belly.

 

Clothed properly, it was nearly impossible to see any sign of his wife's pregnancy. This was especially true if you had never set eyes on her before. To Oberyn, however, it was now becoming obvious. There was just the barest arch between her hip bones now, where she'd been lean enough before that she was almost concave. Her breasts were still high and lovely, but where she'd been no more than a sweet mouthful when they wed, she was now a nice weight in each of his palms when they made love. Her fair, moonlit skin was warmer, too, with a flush having stolen into her cheeks.

 

Counting back in his head the sennights of their marriage and considering the math they had done together to determine when her first moon's blood was missed, Oberyn knew it was likely he'd quickened her on their wedding night or within three or four days afterward. That meant that she was likely within one or two fortnights of showing in such a manner than any courtier with half a mind or any experience with a pregnant woman would recognize it.

 

Not that Oberyn _wanted_ to spend any amount of time in King's Landing. Oberyn wanted the name of Elia and Aegon's murderer, and he wanted Amory Lorch writhing in agony before him as Oberyn dealt him the slow death he deserved. Ideally he'd manage both before he left King's Landing, but his concern for Lyarra and the child she carried was a strong motivator to be flexible. Once she was safe in Sunspear he could make whatever other journeys were required for Elia's justice.

 

Doran had asked him to gather information on the instability of the Usurper's regime. His Prince and Brother had commanded him to learn all that he could of goings on outside of Dorne in a reasonable and safe amount of time, and Oberyn felt that he'd exceeded that already. He knew without a doubt that things in the Westerlands were not as calm or controlled as their enemies wished them to appear. He had the grand coup of the Miners' Guild Ledger to work with, though information was yet out of his reach that he needed to work with it properly. He now knew without a doubt that the Usurper's only Heir was as mad as Aerys ever was and had come into the illness at half the age that King Scab had.

 

 _'No_ ,' Oberyn decided, _'They would not linger in the Red Keep past a fortnight.'_

 

"Are we talking about the feast again?"

 

"We shall have to." Oberyn agreed to the implicit order in his wife's solemn question with a grimace and stood, his knees cracking as he left the discomfort of the floor to pull a chair up beside the head of the settee. "We may have sat up speaking of it ourselves half the night, but we must speak to the others. My Uncle must be informed as well. He arrived in the night, after you were abed, but before I retired."

 

"I don't actually recall going to bed."

 

"You fell asleep out here." Oberyn smiled slightly. "I carried you in."

 

Lyarra made an irritated noise and her hand wandered down to cup her belly.

 

"I'm _barely_ pregnant. I don't understand why I'm so tired!"

 

"Pregnant isn't a thing that comes in barely, sort-of, or maybe in my experience, Lyarra." Oberyn snorted. "You either are, or you aren't. You, darling, most certainly are."

 

A scratch at the door, begging entrance caught Oberyn's attention. A moment later the man on guard announced the Lord Gargalen and Ladies Gwyn, Walda, Jynessa and Myria. Lyarra shot him an alarmed look, her hands going to her wild, disheveled curls and her own dressing robe as she sat up too quickly and listed to the side on the settee. Oberyn leaned forward, steadying her and called out permission for the group to enter. There was, after all, much to speak of.

 

* * *

 

Jon could feel Ned watching with tired affection as he, the Hand of the King, absentmindedly took a thin cotton blanket from the back of the heavy leather couch that the King was stretched out upon snoring. With fatherly tenderness he covered his monarch as if he was still no more than a lad fostering with him. Jon watched as, without thinking, Ned stood up and collected the empty pitchers of ale and the tankards that had been left scattered about and began stacking them on trays to make it easier for the servants to remove them.

 

"The thoughtful boy Lord Rickard sent me has become a thoughtful man."

 

Ned offered his foster father a tired smile at his words, and Jon felt a great upwelling of pride in the Warden of the North. After three dead wives and so many false hopes and stillborn children or buried Heirs, these two men would always be the sons of Jon's heart. Robert his boisterous and loud eldest, and Ned his solemn and earnest younger son.

 

"Given the dawn, Ned, I wouldn't blame you for seeking your bed directly." Jon said quietly. "However, if possible I would have some private speech with you before you do."

 

"I've spent longer nights sleepless with less learned, Lord Arryn." Ned agreed somberly. "Lead on."

 

It was a long, quiet walk up to the Tower of the Hand, but Jon felt better to be sitting in the quiet confines of his solar. It was less cluttered than Robert's. There were no hunting trophies upon the wall, fewer momentos of past battles and old glories. Still, Jon found the bare stone of the walls with the single tapestry of the mountains of his home more comforting than any bric-a-brac would have been. It would have been better had it been gray granite rather than red sandstone, but he would take what he could get.

 

"We spoke only of ill-tidings here last night, and I want to speak to you of them again." Jon began. "First, please tell me every good thing you can think of from the North. I'm desperately in need of any tale of decency you can offer me. I thought your youngest son was to become Ser Brynden's squire, but I did not see either in your retinue?"

 

"My lady wife hasn't seen her uncle in years, and Bran's young to squire." Ned offered readily enough, a small smile touching his face for the first time since Jon had arrived to that disquieting scene in the throne room. "As such my goodfather suggested that Ser Brynden ride north. That way my son could spend his first year or two learning the ways of knights with Ser Brynden at home in Winterfell."

 

"I imagine you seized that opportunity with both hands."

 

"To have my son with me longer and still give him his dream of knighthood? _Aye_ , I had agreed before the man was done suggesting it."

 

Jon chuckled and nodded in agreement, wistful with grief for the son he'd barely known before his death and all the other children he and Lysa had lost. Theirs had been a bad marriage. He'd felt no hatred for her childish foolishness or how she'd been ruined. He disdained only that she'd had less guidance, lacking a mother as she had, and that no-one had been watching her or young Baelish. That and a budding anger when he thought of Lord Hoster's actions.

 

He'd been told that Baelish had refused a marriage to Lysa out of resentment after Brandon Stark had nearly killed the boy. He'd also been told that Lysa had taken the moon tea willingly and knowingly to save her reputation. Now, Jon felt his own honor bitterly besmirched. He had found out only with Littlefinger's death that he'd been an accessory to the whole sordid business.

 

Not, Jon admitted to himself tiredly, that he'd have made any other choice. Even had he known, Ned and Robert's lives had still depended on winning their rebellion. They would have been nothing more than a quashed revolt without the Riverlands, or perhaps the fragmentation of the Iron Throne after years of the kind of war of the sort the Dornish had long perfected. Marrying Lysa had been a means to two ends: first to secure the Riverlands, second to secure an Heir. If the second had failed miserably, the first had served its purpose precisely as it should have.

 

"I'm sorry not to see Ser Brynden again and sorrier yet to have missed meeting your son." Jon sighed. "I trust that the young lady in the circlet of silver chains with the copper sunburst on her brow was your daughter?"

 

"Kind of hard to miss, isn't it?"

 

"As she looks like your sister reborn, yes, I would say it is." Jon breathed out and fixed his goodson with a Look. "Ned, I know well why you wouldn't have written _Robert_ of such a thing, but you could have given _me_ warning. I would not have pressed to see her and the Dornish party in the capitol if I had known."

 

"I had no idea he would react so strongly, Jon." Ned protested, his tone aggrieved. "I imagined that there would be some sadness, but it's been fifteen years. Robert never even knew my sister beyond a few dances and terse words exchanged at Harrenhal."

 

"The late Lady Lyanna has become the emblem on which all of Robert's thwarted hopes for happiness lay, Ned." Jon shook his head and reached up to rub the bridge of his nose before shoving all of that aside with a wave of his hand. "That said, there's nothing to be done now. She's here, her husband is here, and the whole court has seen. Tell me, is she at least somewhat content in her marriage? I'm sorry the Gods bound her to a man such as that."

 

"The Red Viper is annoying, contrary, dangerous as thin ice and twice as treacherous." Ned drawled sarcastically and then slumped into his chair and laced his hands over his chest. "He is also by turns, kind, accepting, and gives every evidence of being a good father and a staunch friend once his friendship is earned. I don't like giving my daughter to him in marriage, but she's happy with it and him so who am I to speak against the Gods' will?"

 

"Does he mean the Crown harm?" Jon asked directly, for he'd never failed to get a direct answer in return from the Stark sitting across from him. Without thinking, he added, "Sit up, Ned, don't slouch."

 

"Sorry, Jon." Ned, as exhausted as he was, didn't find being told not to slouch the least bit odd despite his age and rank. Instead he hauled himself up straight in his chair and grimaced eloquently. He shot his foster-father a serious, doleful look. "I don't believe he needs to, does he, Jon?"

 

Jon blew out a breath and closed his eyes. Ned wasn't done speaking, however. Jon listened in silence.

 

"The Crown Prince threatened a servant with unjust detention and torture in the Black Cells in order to have a document stolen off the desk of the _Hand of the King_ while you were out of King's Landing. Then he took that document and proceeded to use a mix of the authority of his name and several Lannister soldiers to kidnap merchants, giving them no chance at any kind of trial, and then had their tongues ripped out with hot pinchers."

 

"You are forgetting where Prince Joffrey's work was sloppy enough that he apprehended several of the wrong merchants." Jon added and shook his head. "He is Robert's _only_ heir, Ned."

 

"Aye."

 

Ned Stark didn't have to paint a broad picture in words to illustrate why this was a bad thing. Jon himself had felt a hundred carefully constructed plans shatter into dust as soon as he'd realized what was going on the night before. Heading towards the Throne Room to hear the King bellowing furiously to end a feast he'd been anticipating for weeks as a chance to properly show Ned how he cared for his foster brother had been a shock. Arriving there to find out all that he had was worse.

 

"The Queen must quicken again." Jon repeated words spoken the night before by none other than Prince Joffrey's own grandfather. Lord Tywin had been silently livid over the whole affair. What was worse, he might have been _worried_. "Even if Lord Tywin does leave in a fortnight for Casterly Rock and take his grandson with him to teach the Prince the ways of governance, it's imperative we reassure the King's subjects."

 

"At least you said that the smallfolk responded well to the food shipment."

 

"They did, though I'm not sure it's the Crown they were grateful towards." Jon admitted. "I hadn't expected things to be so orderly, as I brought things in to the tradesmen. They would begin the process of seeing the food back to the market stalls where it can begin moving once more. Was Robert exaggerating or did they truly welcome the Red Viper into King's Landing with flowers and cheers?"

 

"Once the Martell banner was unfurled it was like nothing I've ever seen, Jon." Ned shook his head, his expression surprised and a little disturbed. "I saw how empty some parts of the city are as we rode through. I noticed that the shanty towns outside the walls were gone. I had not realized it was as bad as it was in the city."

 

"King's Landing was decimated by the Plague." Jon acknowledged. "It is Dorne that they look to as their unexpected savior."

 

"I thought they were going to pick him up, horse and all, and carry him bodily to the Keep. They stripped the flower market of its goods. Everyone in the party was covered in flowers, myself included, and even Ser Barristan got a laurel crown by the end of it."

 

"Well, if _any_ of the Kingsguard deserve it…" Jon snorted and rubbed his face. "The commons are not unfond of House Stark, either. Word has come south that you were the only Lord Paramount besides Doran Martell who saw his smallfolk inoculated at the same time as his bannermen and their families."

 

"It was the right thing to do."

 

"It was." Even as Jon was sometimes exasperated by his younger ward's inflexible honor and ideals he had to admit that he was proud of Ned, all the same. "It also means that your House is better placed to reassure the smallfolk than any other."

 

"Save House Martell."

 

"Yes, but _House_ _Martell_ has no daughters of the proper age."

 

Ned stared at him with bleary eyes. Jon braced himself, and then waited for it to sink in. When it did, he wasn't disappointed. Ned's face went stone-still and he sat frozen for perhaps seven seconds before shaking his head slowly from side to side. The look he gave Jon was incredulous.

 

"Jon, after last night…"

 

"Ned, I won't talk of _marriage_ . That would be foolish." Jon interrupted. The reaction of the smallfolk to the Viper and Joffrey's latest and most shocking atrocity, this one incapable of being hidden, combined made it all the more essential to establish some balance in the Kingdom. "I'm talking of a betrothal. One that would _never_ come to marriage."

 

"Marriage is, if I recall, the purpose of a betrothal." Ned's tone was stiff and offended and Jon wanted to walk back into the past and slap himself in the head for having given two such different boys the same lessons on honor and integrity. Robert had needed the structure, he'd needed the reminder, but Ned? Jon Arryn had instilled his own House's words too well in his younger ward, he sometimes thought.

 

"It is, in most cases. In matches that are strictly political matters, such rules are sometimes stretched as understandings are reached."

 

" _No_ ." Ned shook his head, his expression turning mulish. "Jon, the Gods themselves just took the daughter I'd thought to keep closest to me as far as she can get without traveling to Essos. Farther, in fact, if you study and map and see Braavos' proximity to the North. My next eldest daughter is _twelve_. I won't consent to even the thought of sending her away yet."

 

"Lady Arya is younger than her sister by three years, and yet she is part of the Princess Lyarra's party. Nor would the Lady Sansa have to leave home right away."

 

"Arya goes because I cannot imagine a girl more interested in sword than needle being anything but miserable north of the Red Mountains." Ned replied sternly, surprising Jon. "Arya's got the Wolf's Blood, Jon, and she needs space and freedom. You know not what it cost me to give her up so she could have those things. As to Sansa, I'm _not_ discussing any betrothal for her."

 

"But if I did understand the pain of having a daughter to send away, then I would not sit here imagining the chaos my own home will fall into when I die, Ned." Jon countered wearily, then waved away Ned's look of guilt. "It's no fault of yours the Gods have given me no living children of my blood. You had no eye on a future marriage in sending the girl south? She's not so much younger than Prince Doran's youngest boy."

 

"No thoughts of a betrothal." Ned shook his head and shot Jon a measured look. "In truth, given her wildness, I imagine the my youngest daughter shall likely find her own husband. I will, of course, retain right of refusal on the boy and hope she'll listen to my suggestions, but I realize that sometimes giving a child some freedom saves us all grief in the long term."

 

Jon breathed out carefully and looked aside, his throat tight. He'd always wondered how much truth existed between the two versions of the tales told about Lyanna Stark's fate. In Dorne and amongst the loyalist families who still hovered at the edge of his worries, eating at his peace of mind, it was held that the girl had run away from a marriage she didn't want and straight into the Silver Prince's arms. Robert, of course, ascribed the worst possible vices and evils to the man. In his mind there was some great love story already written between himself and the Lady Lyanna despite Jon having heard from three of his bannermen present at Harrenhal that the lady had turned to ice in his ward's company.

 

 _"I see_." Jon accepted the message in silence and cursed the past and the bright ideas of lords and children, himself included.

 

He'd been the one to push and encourage both the boys when Robert had seized on the idea of marriage as a way to become Ned's brother in truth. He was of the Vale and had only ever known ladies raised in their own rigid standards and the ways of the Faith. His automatic presumption had been that a woman would obey her father's will and owed her husband happiness.

 

Lysa had taught him otherwise. Jon could now acknowledge where all of his fine ideas had landed them. He ran a Kingdom while the Vale suffered in his absence. Robert was cursed with a throne that tormented him as much as he defaced its glory. Only Ned had escaped with some happiness in life, and even now the Gods were refusing to leave him be.

 

"Be that as it may." Jon went on, duty calling him back. "I do not recall you saying that the Lady Sansa requires that same freedom."

 

"Sansa is not the same as Arya." Ned frowned. "She's much more like Cat."

 

"And would then expect an arranged match."

 

"To a man _worthy_ of her, yes."

 

Jon didn't even bring up the idea that Prince Joffrey was worthy of anything but a merciful death, a comfortable cell to scream away his life in, or a trip straight to the Wall. There were once padded rooms in Dragonstone for the more… obviously deranged of the Targaryen offspring and cousins. He'd never thought that they'd need them for the clean-blooded offspring of Robert's unrelated marriage, but, by all the Gods, what _else_ were they to do with Joffrey?

 

For now, Jon felt he could trust Tywin. The boy had just seen his twelfth nameday. The idea that any lad of twelve would take a group of guards and go out to rip out the tongues of merchants for idle and expected gossip had never and should never have occurred to the Hand of the King. That the only heir to the throne had done it presented a problem that couldn't be solved easily or hastily, and the brief flash of expression on the Old Lion's face before the iron control had resurfaced had told Jon all he needed to know.

 

The Lannister would do anything to protect his legacy, and he didn't want Joffrey to bear it. He would take the Crown Prince to Casterly Rock. He would guard the boy and make sure the boy was guarded. Meanwhile Queen Cersei would have to produce another child. One that would replace Joffrey in the succession as soon as was possible. While Jon knew that Tywin was no kinslayer, whatever his other faults, they would need to find some method of removing the Heir to the throne from the King's line. That, however, could wait a bit.

 

Frankly, Jon's greatest worry was the Queen's womb. Given Robert's obvious fertility and virility, he could not understand how they'd only born three children in the time they had. Yes, Robert no longer sought the Queen's bed out of more than duty, but since they'd lost Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella he'd done so regularly. _Why_ had she not conceived?

 

 _If nothing else, there were always Robert's bastards_ , Jon thought. It made him uneasy, though. Lord Tywin would never accept a bastard upon the throne. The cost had been too high to get his line where it was. If that was the route they had to take, there would be war with the Westerlands. Jon wasn't even sure that Tywin wouldn't establish Joffrey as a well-watched puppet-king to his own rule if it meant that keeping his bloodline in place.

 

"Jon?"

 

Lord Arryn started, realizing suddenly that he'd drifted so deeply into thought that Ned's worried face was peering at him in concern. Offering a small smile Jon shrugged and sat up straighter. Reaching out he patted Ned on the shoulder.

 

"Sorry, I began to doze off. You'll understand when you're my age." Jon rose and shook his head. "It's no time to speak of such things, anyway. We've had a hard night, and we'll have a difficult day today. There's too much to do for it to be otherwise. What are your plans, Ned?"

 

"Bed, then spending time with the King." Ned cracked his neck, then paused as he rose. "One more thing, Jon."

 

"Yes?"

 

"Stevron Frey made sure that Prince Oberyn knows Amory Lorch murdered his niece." Ned's statement led to a mix of foreboding and satisfaction settling in Jon's guts. "I've kept my word and will, but I plan to ask Robert to do something himself about the Mountain. It's long past time, and if you've fears of the smallfolk and their opinion of the Crown, why not do this? The Mountain's unloved in the Westerlands, and seeing him properly punished would be a good message to send."

 

Jon froze, turning the idea over in his mind.

 

"True… and if it would do nothing to settle the Viper's grudge, Prince Doran is a reasonable man. You say you don't know politics, but you're correct in this." Jon licked his lips and then shook his head. "Go _carefully_ , Ned, especially with your daughter's resemblance bringing his hatred of the dragons to mind."

 

"... He's still calling them dragonspawn, then?"

 

Jon could hear the distaste and old anger stirring beneath Ned's words and Jon resisted the urge to rail at the heavens. Lady Lyanna's death and their shared grief had brought his boys back together. It was too easy to forget how badly they'd been driven apart by those two bloody red cloaks and what they'd hidden. He'd had fears that the North would split from the Seven Kingdoms entirely when Ned found Lyanna Stark, if the Lady herself truly had run away rather than been kidnapped. Of all the things that the Crown could not afford now it was to lose the one ally they had who was both strong and honorable.

 

"Just go carefully, Ned, his wounds are going to be raw." Jon squeezed Ned's shoulder. "After all, he's watching a prince steal away the image of his lost love."

 

"She's my _daughter_ , Jon."

 

"You know Robert'll do no more than watch and mourn, but mourning hurts and that same prince is standing by with salt at the ready to grind into Robert's wounds."

 

"Aye, true." Ned winced and sighed. "You were right, though, when you said that all this talk would do little. I'm for bed."

 

"Myself as well." Jon patted him. "Know that we are overjoyed to have you here, Ned. Robert and I both have missed you greatly."

 

"And I you." Ned paused, breathed out, and then looked back with a thin, hard expression. "I noticed the Queen would have had the seating reversed at the feast. Robert caught her at it, I take it?"

 

Jon offered him a smile as the only answer, seeing it reassure his foster son. The truth weighed on him, however, as he sought his own bed. Aching joints sang in a chorus of pain as he laid himself down. Because, to be honest, he doubted that Robert even noticed the ugly black scorched mark on the tiles of the Great Hall floor anymore. Even if he did, he'd been too eager to see his friend and too much in his cups to think on it in detail.

 

Thank all the Gods that Varys had spotted the Queen's intentions and subverted them. Whatever that woman was thinking, Jon did not know. As it was, it was bad enough to have Lady Jynessa Blackmont sitting nearly opposite Ned overtop the very spot where Rickard Stark had been burned to death in his own armor by the Mad King. The thought of his foster-son being asked to do the same made Jon's blood run cold.

 

* * *

 

"He cannot deny me the right to see my son!" Cersei's voice was half-cold fury and half-pleading. " _Father-_."

 

"Enough."

 

Tyrion Lannister took a deep pull of his glass of wine and did not move from his seat. He was currently off in a corner of his father's guest solar, slightly removed from the triumvirate seated in front of the cold fireplace. Given the expression twisting Cersei's face and the frost all but settling into the air around Lord Twyin, it was a far better place to be than any other. He didn't envy his brother in having to sit between the two.

 

"Last night the King was ready to put your son aside entirely, if not send him to the Wall." Twyin went on mercilessly.

 

_"He cannot."_

 

"Of course he can, he's the King as well as the boy's father." Tywin scoffed.

 

"I wouldn't allow it!"

 

"How would you prevent it?"

 

"You-."

 

 _"_ I will be taking my grandson, the heir to the throne, to Casterly Rock in a fortnight to begin teaching him the responsibilities of rulership." Tyrion listened to the steel in his father's voice. "Something he's obviously gotten no instruction on from the oaf that fathered him."

 

 _'Little do you know, Father,'_ Tyrion thought derisively to himself as he poured himself another glass of wine and tried and failed to catch Jaime's eye. His brother's gaze was riveted to Cersei's face. Unsurprisingly, Tyrion reflected tiredly, as Jaime's moods were ruled utterly by his twin's whenever in her presence.

 

"We're going-."

 

" _You_ are going nowhere, Your Grace. It's your duty to the Crown and to your family to provide the King with more children. If you cannot, he has no few bastards he can legitimize if you make him desperate enough." Tywin went on heartlessly. "Thirteen years of marriage, no major separations save the Greyjoy Rebellion, and yet only three pregnancies. I know not what you've been thinking."

 

"You expect me to _welcome_ that drunken lout into my bed-."

 

"I _expect_ you to do your duty to your family and your throne; enjoyment is not a matter of concern or a topic I want to hear anything of."

 

Tyrion might have actually enjoyed listening to his sister get such a dressing down under any other circumstance. As it was he was all too happy to get drunk instead. He'd been up half the night trying to make sense of the late and unlamented Petyr Baelish's bookkeeping. The result had been no more than a headache and the growing certainty that something was greatly amiss. The man's math was perfect, he couldn't fault that, but some of the expenses made no sense. He had a feeling that monsters were lurking, hidden in innocent numbers and crammed beneath the rocks and outcroppings created by King Robert's lavish spending.

 

"You cannot take my son. He's all I have left!" Cersei's next comment brought Tyrion's eyes up and some flicker of real pity to his heart.

 

Her beautiful face was twisted in pain. Jaime reached out and took her hand. Tyrion knew that, if she'd never loved anything else truly in her life, she'd always loved her children. Myrcella and Tommen dying as they had, with their mother clutching at their hands and begging the Gods for their lives while their flesh slowly twisted and turned to stone, had been horrible. Tyrion would wish such a fate on no-one, especially innocent children like his niece and nephew. More importantly, he'd wish no such loss on his dear sister. Even she hadn't deserved to watch that happen, and she'd grown more desperate, quick tempered, and vindictive since.

 

Worse, Tyrion had watched as the Crown Prince grew bolder in his cruelties. With the King utterly focused on either his vices or the problems of the realm there was even less attention than usual there for his heir. Joffrey became desperate for the acclaim of a 'father' he idolized, and grasped at whatever violent, cruel ways his twisted mind devised to gain that attention. Cersei coddled her son more fiercely, and so did less to control his own perversions. Now, they'd finally seen a public display of all that was wrong with the Heir.

 

"I must leave." Cersei finally spoke, visibly seething. "My _duties_ call me. I must entertain the ladies of the Dornish party. If you can call women who likely gave their maidenheads to their servants before they saw their fifteenth nameday, and who entertain lovers in their own homes, _ladies_. Oh, and lets not forget their bastard princess. My husband's one true love returned from the dead in the arms of a Viper."

 

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't lacking limbs such as arms what makes something a snake?" Tyrion's tongue promptly got away from him and he silently cursed himself for it.

 

He'd been hoping to go unnoticed…

 

"I see we've traded a sober pimp for a drunken whorechaser minding the books." Cersei sneered. "I'm sure that will only bode well for the Crown's future finances."

 

"From the lady who ships sugar in for her household from _Myr_ because she won't deal with Dorne and Lady Olenna offends her, I will take bookkeeping advice with all of the spirit it's intended."

 

"Tyrion." Jaime chided, his expression pained and Tyrion offered the tall blond man a small shrug of apology for his brother's sake, not his sister's.

 

"Cersei, go make your invitations to tea and see that there are no surprises at tonight's feast." Tywin spoke as though no such exchange had taken place. "Your son will not be attending. Do _not_ make another seating error that Varys is forced to correct."

 

"Carpets were meant to be put down, Father, acquit me of stupidity, please." Cersei said pertly. "Etiquette dictates that the Dornish Prince had to sit on the King's right hand side, but if I shifted Ned Stark his attention should have shifted with it. I had no idea that the horse-faced whore from Harrenhal would make a reappearance. My plan was to handle the Dornish myself as I am neither eternally drunken nor politically incompetent."

 

Tywin nodded after a moment, giving her the point. Given her drinking Tyrion felt that at least part of that was overgenerous. With that Cersei swept from the room. Jaime rose and Tyrion waved one hand at his brother idly, planning to make his own exit. It made sense that, in that moment, their dear father would ambush them both.

 

"Jaime, you will be coming home with your nephew as the Kingsguard responsible for his safety."

 

"What?" Jaime's expression of surprise couldn't have been more pronounced if he tried. "You can't expect Cersei to stay here _alone-_."

 

"She will have her _husband_ , her loyal guards, and an entire court for company."

 

"She won't have any family."

 

"Then perhaps that will encourage her to enlarge ours. Go back to your duties."

 

Jaime left in a cloud of anger of his own making, though it was far louder than Cersei's and involved a great deal of handsome, hard-jawed striding as he left the room in his own version of Cersei's huff.

 

"You've made progress with the mess Littlefinger's death left behind."

 

It wasn't a question so much as a demand and Tyrion let out a deep breath and contented himself with the fact that he could not slip out of the room. Instead he slipped out of his chair and came to stand before his father's seat. Thin and brittle as his father looked, he knew not to cross Lord Tywin. It was time to make his report, as though he were in the schoolroom once more. He was willing to bet every dragon to his name that his father would be as impossible to satisfy as always.

 

"I've verified the Crown's debts in their entirety." He reported. "As to the full audit, Baelish knew what he was doing even if he was a swindler. It will take moons to fully sort out the books, and I can't do it here with half the court tripping over me trying to get a look at the room in the Hand's Tower where it's all kept. The Lord Hand and I have spoken of it and agreed that, as the bandits are less of a risk, I will take the books, a few loyal servants up to the task, and a guard detachment and head for one of the royal hunting lodges. There I will be unbothered as I sort through it all."

 

"Jon Arryn is no fool." Tywin said and Tyrion raised his eyebrows.

 

"It was actually my suggestion."

 

Tywin dismissed him with a gesture and turned to several letters, newly delivered from the ravenry, that awaited him on a silver platter. Stifling any other expression of annoyance, Tyrion quit the room. Their family currently had enough problems without him throwing himself into the Old Lion's teeth over this. Mayhaps his father would be forced to see his skills and usefulness after he'd figured out how the Mockingbird had defrauded the Crown.

 

 _'And_ ,' Tyrion thought wryly, _'Mayhaps I will learn to joust and claim a flower crown for the most beautiful lady in the land. She will fall at my feet in delight and love me forever._ ' Then, after that, he'd defeat the Mountain That Rides in single combat…

 

* * *

 

Lyarra again looked nothing like the other women clustered about the Queen, or the Queen herself, but she refused to be cowed by it. Neither Lady Jynessa nor Lady Myria wore court fashions, either, and they were unintimidated. Besides, Lyarra was determined to live up to her husband's expectations of her. She would never forget that moment in their shared tent when he'd held her eyes and reminded her of his family's words and told her that she was to look up for him when others looked down upon her.

 

"Your Grace, thank you for your kind invitation." Lyarra dropped into a curtsey of precisely the proper amount.

 

Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria had spent weeks drilling all of the bones of diplomacy and curtesy into Lyarra's mind. Where it had never been important for her to learn the niggling details of high southron manners, Lyarra had begun to regret her own relief at Lady Stark's quick dismissal of her from such lessons as soon as she'd first stepped into the wheelhouse with the two established Dornish ladies. From that moment onward the trip wheelhouse had become a schoolroom.

 

If it had largely been a more pleasant one than Septa Mordane's teachings, Lyarra had to admit that it hadn't been perfect. The ladies had been kind for the most part, and they were both good teachers. It had been inevitable that they grow exasperated with each other at points though, and they had. Lyarra still remembered with real embarrassment their repeated chastisements that water could be used freely and incautiously in the North, but it was a precious commodity in Dorne and she must learn to regulate her use of it. Then there was her own stubborn refusal to change certain Northern mannerisms, and her irritation for the fact that the ladies wouldn't stop at least trying to get her to stop snorting or preferring boots to other footwear.

 

"Princess Lyarra, how beautiful you look this morning." The blonde woman rose, a goddess in silk and flowing, orderly waves of golden hair as she dipped to kiss both of Lyarra's cheeks. "What an _interesting_ gown, I've never seen one quite like it."

 

They'd both worn blue. The Queen had a blue-green gown on that wrapped around her like a robe. It's long, trialing square sleeves showed a pattern of golden fireflies embroidered here and there, and she wore two layers underneath it to flutter handsomely in the little breeze pushing through the Red Keep's gardens. She'd also pulled it slightly open in the front when she'd wrapped it around herself to better show off her cleavage. She was a woman grown and a mother maid, and Lyarra couldn't help noting how much fuller and more developed the slightly taller woman's body was.

 

Still, Lyarra trusted Gwyn. It irritated her that the Queen's invitation was so specific to Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria when she knew that there were other ladies in Lyarra's party. As such Lyarra felt less self-conscious than she might have. Her pride and protectiveness over her friends extended to their work.

 

"Thank you, Your Grace. I take that as a great compliment from a woman of your discernment." Lyarra offered a small smile she dredged up from her training as she took her own seat opposite the queen. "However, it's only a little different from many Northern gowns. Altered as it is, in deference to the weather."

 

The day dress, part of her trousseau, was a creation of Sansa and Gwyn's combined imagination. Lyarra's was a dress of a cotton so fine and tightly woven it might as well have been satin. It was a dark blue with light blue embroidery running in broad stripes down the low round neckline that had alarmed her the first time she saw it. It flared into a wide skirt, but with little reinforcement from under layers so it just flowed around her when she walked. The sleeves were slit at the top of her bicep and then extended into a leaf shape to flutter as she moved.

 

"If you find our weather hot, Princess Lyarra, then I fear for you in Dorne." The Queen's mouth thinned slightly as she offered another friendly smile that did nothing to reach her bright green eyes or lighten the fan of lines forming around them.

 

"Actually, I'm growing to quite enjoy it." Lyarra wasn't sweating despite the fact that the Queen had chosen to locate the three round tables this tea party would be using out in the full sun rather than in the shade. It felt like a personal triumph. "It settles in the bones nicely, doesn't it?"

 

"We shall make a Dornishwoman of you yet, Your Grace." Lady Jynessa approved, settling into her own chair.

 

"I'm sure you shall."

 

 _'That_ ,' Lyarra noted with a bristling inside of herself, _'Had definitely been an insult.'_

 

"Tell me, Queen Cersei, how are you feeling this morning?" Lady Myria asked, and Lyarra reminded herself that the Southrons considered everything prior to the noon morning; they had more afternoon light to work with. "Feasts, especially those disrupted by _unanticipated_ events, can be so wearying to host."

 

There was an empty chair again, Lyarra noticed, draped in black velvet. On one hand she felt a well of sympathy for the Queen. The chair was undoubtedly for the Princess Myrcella, who would have been included in such moments as this to teach her of her duties as a princess. At the same time, it was beginning to feel eerie. It had been well more than a year since the Queen's two children had died. When Lady Stark's child, a son between Sansa and Arya, had died in his cradle within a few hours of a difficult birth, the lady had been heartbroken. She hadn't, however, treated it like _this_.

 

Lyarra reminded herself to be kind. Just imagining anything happening to the babe she carried was heartbreaking. Lady Stark had only known her son for less than a day when he'd died. The Queen had loved her children for years before she lost them, and recently that loss had been compounded by a mob's desperation and violence.

 

"I couldn't be better." The Queen drawled in return. "I imagine that, were feasts an uncommon occurrence, I might be less versed in their organization. Here we have no difficulties in living such a lifestyle."

 

That comment surprised Lyarra. If it was common to hear whispered rumos of the Crown's great debt, what were they doing having frequent feasts? For that matter, how could the Queen so blindly brush aside the expense as though each one were nothing worth worrying? Perhaps the King wasn't the only one to blame for the Crown's situation, and if that was the case? Lyarra suddenly wondered how the Lannisters themselves lived and what all of that extravagance might mean in relation to the huge ledger locked in their guarded quarters.

 

"It must be such a joy to worry so little about household accounts." Lady Jynessa commented.

 

The Queen's eyes grew brittle and bright and she smiled instead at Lyarra. Her lips were stained, Lyarra noticed, to darken them to a richer red. She could also detect a bit of powder on her face. Lyarra felt a moment's surprise as she so seldom experimented with face paints; for that matter, neither did the Dornish ladies. They swore it just melted away in the heat and sweat of Dorne and instead concentrated on their eyes. After the broth and toast had settled her stomach, Lyarra herself had been subjected to the now daily routine of kohl and the shimmering powders they used on their lids under Gwyn and Walda's deft hands.

 

"But we're leaving your princess out of our conversation." The Queen waved a hand. "It must be such a bother to be a young bride amidst a group of so many experienced wives as ourselves. And I'm forgetting my duties. What refreshment may I offer you?"

 

The servants appeared then. The table was soon groaning with lemon cakes and other concoctions of sugar, flour, and time. Thankfully their servants were on hand as well. Every beverage offered was some kind of wine, and the smell threatened to go to Lyarra's head. As their own vessels and plate were laid out, Lyarra sipped at her cup. Though it was passed to her already full in a very discreet manner, she thought she caught the Queen's green eyes narrowing at it.

 

Taking a small bowl of light custard, Lyarra carefully settled the silver stained spoon into it and watched for a reaction. She covered the motion with a question for the Queen. She followed Lady Jynessa's advice to ask a question only mildly related to her interests, and Gwyn's as well. Gwyn said that the Queen was vain and a compliment never went amiss.

 

"I was surprised to see how grown Prince Joffrey was, for I wouldn't have believed you old enough to be his mother when I first saw you in the courtyard, Queen Cersei." Lyarra was pleased that the custard didn't react in any way that indicated it was tainted; she was hungry and the delicate notes of sweetness in the dish helped settle her stomach further. "However long have you been away from home to be so comfortable in your rank? I don't know that I shall ever stop looking over my shoulder when someone calls me, _'Princess'_."

 

"Well, some are born for their rank and others must rise to it." The Queen sipped her wine, the tone of her voice giving away a hint of her derision as she failed to answer the first question. "It must be uncomfortable to make _such_ a leap as you have, but I'm sure you'll adapt."

 

The inevitable allusion on her bastardy had been made and a couple of the women who sat around the Queen, a little back and removed from them, smirked. One woman who looked more than a little drunk, tittered aloud. Refusing to bend, Lyarra smiled back and thought of Ghost as she showed her teeth.

 

"All must adapt to their circumstances or fail, that is true."

 

There was a beat of silence, and then the Queen smiled again, her own teeth showing for once rather than just a polite twist of her lips.

 

"Has your husband the Prince spoken to you much of the home you'll find in Dorne?"

 

"A great deal." Lyarra took a sip of her pear juice calmly. "I look forward to meeting his family."

 

"A daunting task, no doubt, when there is so _much_ of it."

 

"On the contrary. I'm already from a large family with many brothers and sisters. I would feel lonely were I to go to a place and find it denuded of kin to love."

 

"Then you're looking forward to being a stepmother."

 

"It's a difficult thing, being a girl without a mother." Lyarra replied with more sincerity than she intended and, for a moment, a hint of something gentler touched the Queen's green eyes.

 

"Yes, it is." Then the emerald orbs hardened. "It is a far worse task to be a mother without a daughter."

 

"You have my deepest sympathies." Lyarra said sincerely and had to work to keep her hand from protectively draping over her own belly at the thought.

 

"I understand that the Lady Arya is much of an age with my daughter." The Queen sipped her tea. "Is there a particular reason she could not _also_ meet my invitation."

 

"I'm afraid your household was entirely too generous to my sister last night." Lyarra could at least answer that with some honesty and a smile. "While my father and I were busy at the feast my sister overindulged in dessert and woke up feeling unwell this morning."

 

It was a bit funny to picture her poor sister, curled up with Nymeria on her guest bed, and pouting pitifully from where she had her arms wrapped around her pet and her face buried in the young direwolf's gray fur. With Gwyn and Walda busy elsewhere and only two rather doting servants and her favorite Dornish guardsman to supervise her Lyarra's poor sister had apparently eaten nearly her weight in fruit tarts and biscuits. Lyarra had been ill in the morning, but Arya had been up all night with a sore belly.

 

"My son, the Prince Tommen, would do that if not watched." The Queen's smile was genuinely tender for a moment. Then that moment passed. "You must be looking forward to being a mother as well, if you're so close to your siblings."

 

"I am."

 

"With a husband of such known virility as Prince Oberyn, you surely shall not have to wait long."

 

"These things happen in their own time, as I'm sure you know, Your Grace." Lady Jynessa added. "My children were not born close together, and weren't Prince Joffrey and the little princess six years apart in age?"

 

The Queen's smile grew brittle, then. Lyarra could only imagine the pressure she was under to produce more heirs. Still, the woman put the hair on the back of Lyarra's neck up. She was glad to have the weight of her curls covering her back and hiding the occasional stiff set of her shoulders.

 

"Yes, these things do happen in their own time." Queen Cersei agreed, and then smiled. "Speaking of children and ages. Isn't your sister, the Lady Sansa, of an age with my dear Joffrey?"

 

"She is." Lyarra had no idea why the Queen would bring that up. "Father deemed the journey of less benefit to her than more time with the Lady Stark, learning to run a household."

 

"A pity." The Queen smiled. "While I have no doubts as to Lord Hoster Tully's daughters' many capabilities." That was an insult well-cloaked in a compliment, Lyarra decided. "I do worry for your sister. After all, your father acknowledged how much was to be learned by a lady in the south once already. Your younger sister goes to become part of your household in Dorne, does she not?"

 

"She does."

 

"Then _surely_ the Lady Sansa could benefit from the culture of the south as well." The Queen took a sip of her wine and Lyarra wondered why on earth they called such things 'tea parties'. She couldn't see a single member of either party drinking a tisane, and none had been offered. "I've heard that she's quite a beauty. Tell me, does she take after her mother or father? Your resemblance to your late aunt cannot be mistaken, but Lady Arya _obviously_ got the Stark look from her father."

 

The disdain in that comment could not have been properly moved without a shovel. Lyarra felt something in her chest tighten and then twist in anger. As a child she'd had to deal with many comments about her long, bony face. She'd been all awkward limbs and skinned knees and clumsiness as she grew into her proportions. It wasn't until she had seen two-and-ten moons that the transformation began where she grew into her features and her limbs smoothed into a beauty that she still forgot she possessed sometimes.

 

Arya bore similar teasing. Sansa herself was guilty of it, though it was usually more gently done now that she had Lyarra's looks to observe whenever she teased her baby sister. Still, her temper was up and it was her only justification for what followed.

 

"Actually, Lady Arya and I could be twins our looks are so similar." Lyarra sipped at her tea. "Then again, you should understand. Lady Gwyn once told me that the servants of Casterly Rock were much amused by your habit of wearing your brother's clothing down to the castle yard. She even said that you'd convinced Ser Jaime to wear your frocks and attend your lessons with the Septa so you could do it."

 

The Queen choked on her wine and beside her, Lady Jynessa's black eyes glittered merrily.

 

"I - _what_?" The Queen laughed in a mix of real amusement, shock, and some anger. "Wherever did you hear that? Who is Lady Gwyn?"

 

"Lady Gwyn Parren was a fosterling of your aunt, the Lady Genna. She was a ward at Casterly Rock for a time before coming to Winterfell. Now she's is my principle lady-in-waiting."

 

"I see." The Queen smiled thinly. "Well. Mayhaps Jaime and I were not as undiscovered as I thought, if the servants carry such tales. I had thought that in the Rock they knew better than to gossip so."

 

"I've found that servants gossip everywhere, Your Grace." Lady Myria smiled sweetly and laughed her low, husky laugh. "And they see everything as well. I should tell you of the time my brother, Gods grant him rest, and I snuck scorpions into the flour bin."

 

"Scorpions." The Queen's voice was flat.

 

"Not all varieties are poisonous." Lady Jynessa chuckled. "I think we've all had fun with some of the harmless sorts. They do look ever so much worse to foreigners. It's the harmless varieties that have the largest pincers, you see."

 

"Children do tend to get carried away in their games." The Queen went on calculatingly. "Or when encouraged by unsavory elements. I fear my son, Prince Joffrey, is now suffering for the company he keeps."

 

Lyarra only managed to wipe the frank disbelief off her face a second late after it showed up. The Queen saw it. Lyarra noted the way her lips thinned again as she went held her goblet out to be refilled. Apparently it was a sign of displeasure the Queen’s otherwise decent self-control couldn’t hide easily.

 

"Truly." Lady Myria agreed. "We must take great care where the company our children keeps is concerned."

 

"The false faces one constantly deals with only make it more difficult." The Queen lamented. "It's ever so difficult to know who is a friend and who is one more leech sucking at the power of a Great Family."

 

"Whoever it was must be a terrible influence indeed, if it could convince the Prince to remove secure documents from the Hand's Tower." Lyarra agreed, watching the Queen stiffen as she spoke bluntly.

 

Any fear that Lady Jynessa or Lady Myria might disapprove was put aside. Not only was Lyarra tired of the Queen's attitude, but they weren't getting anywhere. She had a feeling that if allowed the Queen would spend the rest of the afternoon implying that nothing was her son's fault and never saying anything of merit. Still, she avoided direct mention of what Prince Joffrey had actually done. She didn't want the lone custard she'd eaten to make a reappearance. Her stomach felt fine, but her appetite itself was rebelling against the mere idea of shirking responsibility the way that the Queen was in the progress of doing.

 

"Indeed." Lady Myria agreed. "I hope the King has made steps to separate the Prince from such a man. I do, of course, _presume_ it was a man?"

 

"Isn't it always?" The Queen asked dryly.

 

Lyarra was saved from saying anything further by the softer shifting of gravel beneath sandals. Turning to look she saw her husband approaching with Ser Daemon, Ser Deziel, and Lord Gargalen. Ser Arron still stood unobtrusively in the background with the three guards handpicked to watch Lyarra with the formidable knight while they were in the Red Keep.

 

"Prince Oberyn, what a _pleasant_ surprise." The Queen smiled and raked her eyes up and down Lyarra's husband, causing a well of annoyance in Lyarra.

 

"To be pleasant to beautiful women is a goal all men aspire to, surely." He bowed floridly and then stood. "However, I am afraid that I must steal your guests, Your Grace, and beg your forgiveness after the fact."

 

"A heartless act, Prince Oberyn, however I have my own duties to attend to, so I can forgive you today." The blonde woman rose gracefully and smoothed her hands over the thighs of her robe.

 

Lyarra felt something petty inside her uncoil and dance when her husband feigned not seeing her hand rising as he turned and offered Lyarra his own, drawing her from her chair as Lord Gargalen stepped forward and intercepted the Queen instead. Leaning on his ebony cane the old man pressed a gallant kiss to the Queen's hand, and bid her his own complex and complimentary greetings. By the time introductions had been made, excuses put forth, and pretty things said, Lyarra was tucked in against Oberyn's side with her arm wound around his as they walked back towards the keep.

 

"How was your meeting with the Hand?"

 

"Postponed. Excuses were given for Lord Jon Arryn's age, but I have it from a reliable source that he and your father spent all night in the King's Solar. I spent the day at the docks and in the city, instead."

 

"I wish I could have gone with you." Lyarra breathed quietly in response and he smiled back. "Did you check on Arya?"

 

"I took her with me, in fact. She was fine once she'd gotten up and walked her stomach ache off a bit." Oberyn observed. "Letting a miserable child lie about isn't often a good course. Sometimes relieving the pressure is the best option."

 

"He ran her around until she vomited over the rails of the ship." Lord Gargalen said wryly, then sighed. "She did, however, attest to feeling better afterward."

 

Lyarra sighed but couldn't help smiling. That sounded like something her husband would do. It also sounded like something her favorite sister would say.

 

"I'm sure Arya enjoyed her trip into the city."

 

"She was forever trying to dart off. I think I have twice as many gray hairs now as I did before I left."

 

Lyarra reached up and tucked her husband's short hair behind his ears, more of an act of brushing and settling strands than anything else. He shivered and looked down at her, his black eyes growing warm. She smiled back up at him, suddenly grateful for his presence and his willingness to accept a bastard for a wife and her wild sister for herself.

 

"I don't see any particular increase, my Prince."

 

"I find myself exhausted after spending the day running after your sister. Would you care to join me in an afternoon nap before we make ready for the next exciting feast the King chooses to throw in our honor?"

 

"I think some rest would be wise. There's supposed to be dancing tonight."

 

As Lyarra agreed she heard Lord Gargalen mutter something about his nephew's lack of subtlety to Lady Jynessa and had to restrain a giggle. She felt her face flush in embarrassment, but it wasn't that bad. The Dornish, she knew, would be more pleased than inclined to mock her for being a 'sinful' or 'lustful' bastard. After all, they'd started off thinking she was a bit of a prude, hadn't they?

 

* * *

 

Oberyn was hovering between sleep and wakefulness in the warm languor after lovemaking. It was a wonderful place to be. Sweat was drying all over his body beneath the thin silk sheet currently thrown over himself and Lyarra. She was soft and sweet, curled against his chest with one leg thrown over his thighs as he lay sprawled on his back.

 

A loud, rude knock on the bedchamber door jolted him out of sleep.

 

"Lord Gargalen respectfully requests the Prince wake up and remember he has duties other than his own desires to fulfill, and that you both need to bathe before the ball."

 

Lyarra groaned against his shoulder, the noise falling away into a quiet snicker as she hauled herself up to sit beside him, her curls an incredible tangled mass of rebellion around her head and shoulders. Oberyn admired the chaos of his handiwork and reached up to toy with the spiral ends of her hair. The knock returned.

 

"You really need to bathe, Your Grace." Lady Gwyn's cheerful voice advised them. "The smell coming out from under the door isn't unlike one of my father's rental establishments."

 

"Gwyn, I'm going to hit you!" Lyarra turned red and called at her friend while Oberyn laughed in shock.

 

"Did her father truly own a whorehose?"

 

"He owned _two_." Lyarra groused as she stood up and fumbled for her robe. "I told you that once she wasn't afraid, she would be awful."

 

"I cannot believe she calls _you_ blunt."

 

"The difference is that I don't do it be intentionally offensive." His wife was still delightfully pink and he drew her into his arms as he rose, cracking his back loudly before leaning down for a kiss.

 

Regretfully he pulled back from the kiss and found his own robe. Walking into the solar he watched as Gwyn led Lyarra into the dressing room. With the ladies gone, he cast aside the robe and climbed immediately into the cedar tub of warm water sitting in front of the unlit fireplace.

 

"Well, Uncle?"

 

Lord Gargalen was sitting comfortably in the best chair in the room with his bad leg elevated on a footstool. He'd threaded his fingers together over his flat stomach and gave every evidence of having been on the verge of a nap of his own. Oberyn wasn't fooled.

 

"The Lady Gwyn grows bold, but she's not _that_ bold, Uncle." Oberyn snorted at his uncle he picked up a cloth and a bar of soap. "Must you put the child up to things?"

 

"If it helps her establish her confidence, then yes, I must." The older man smiled. "While you were enjoying your lovely wife's company I was at work."

 

"And?"

 

"And so was the Lady Gwyn, it seems."

 

Oberyn paused in scrubbing beneath his arms to look at his father's brother. The older man ran a hand through his gray hair and nodded towards the other occupants of the room. Ser Ulwyk had wandered out from behind a screen when the ladies closed the dressing room door. Now he was busily pouring all of them a proper cup of Dornish Red from a sideboard carafe. Oberyn accepted his cup with thanks as his Uncle did the same and the future Lord of Hellholt lowered himself down into a chair of his own.

 

"I've never been a spy before." Ser Ulwyck grinned. "I don't think I'm particularly good at it, nor is it particularly gentle on one's ego."

 

"I _must_ hear this." Oberyn snorted and leaned forward as his uncle gestured for the younger man to speak first.

 

"The Red Keep apparently has four kitchens." Ser Ulwyck began explaining, his eyes bright. "The largest mostly handles the needs of the servants, feasts, celebrations, and day-to-day cooking. There is also a dedicated baking kitchen for just that. Then there are two smaller kitchens. One, which has the most security, was constructed by the Mad King and only serves the needs of the royal family. The least important kitchen is dedicated to parties in the capital that bring their own staff. Lady Gwyn took some of our servants and the northern servants down to take possession of part of that kitchen for our own use during our stay."

 

"Reasonable." Oberyn's Uncle observed. "One might even call it prudent."

 

"I offered no disagreement with the task, I merely planned to go along as a guard as I had little enough to do and the young ladies are always interesting company." Ser Ulwyck grinned then. "Lady Gwyn was having none of it. Apparently that kitchen also serves as a punishment duty. It's got a steady stream of disgruntled maids demoted for having caught the King's eye, anyone who gained the Queen's wrath without earning dismissal or worse, or just those on the outs with the castle's steward. All are tasked with menial duties, such as running errands and such for the guest's servants. My presence, as I'm a noble of some merit apparently, was ruled too disruptive."

 

"And the Lady Gwyn and Lady Walda would not be disruptive?" Oberyn asked curiously.

 

"They're both distant, lower nobility to be sure but they are not common."

 

"The Lady Gwyn produced from nowhere a coarse brown cothartie matched with a threadbare cotton surcoat that was more than half-apron, and wrapped her hair in unbleached, rough linen before going down. Likewise, Lady Walda wore her oldest dress and a stained linen kerchief over her hair. Both girls vanished completely in amongst the servants without even disguising their names."

 

"And yourself?"

 

"I held us up a bit." Ellaria's brother was grinning. "One of our guards was willing to spot me their properly battered boiled leathers and a rougher tunic. I cannot say where the worn out boots I now possess came from, but they fit surprisingly well and are quite comfortable."

 

Oberyn laughed at the image his friend described. Meanwhile Lord Gargalen was looking silently satisfied. Oberyn sat forward.

 

"What did you do, Ulwyck, and what did you _learn_?"

 

"I held up a wall. Had I not leaned against it, diligently taste-testing whatever tidbit the girls handed me, the whole castle would have surely collapsed."

 

Oberyn snorted.

 

"You have so little faith, my Prince, I'm _hurt."_ Ser Ulwyk put a hand on his chest, but grinned. "You should kiss that little Parren girl full on the mouth, though. I would have, if she weren't holding a cleaver most of the time. I am half-afraid of what I learned today and half-certain I'm about to become a better lord for it. Apparently not all kitchen staff are well-fed, and the cleaning drudges are routinely half-starved north of the Red Mountains."

 

"That's a good way to get poisoned." Lord Gargalen observed dryly. "Unhappy servants are more dangerous than a foreign siege."

 

"You speak the truth." Ser Ulwyck agreed, then paused. "Oberyn, you've scratches on your back."

 

"I earned them." Oberyn grinned, then paused. "I cannot, however, reach them."

 

Snorting, his friend stood and came over to take the cloth. He was rough enough that Oberyn winced, but allowed the cleaning. It was times like this that he resented travelling. In the privacy of his own household he could have retired to a bath with his wife and had someone far kinder scrubbing his back.

 

"There, now you won't get blood on your finery." The other man stated and returned to his seat. "Anyway, as I was saying. Between the two girls we now know a lot of interesting things, though none as interesting as one might have hoped."

 

Oberyn gestured for him to go on as he attacked his feet with the soap and cloth.

 

"According to the servants, carving the tongues out of prominent merchants is not an _isolated_ thing. It's the first time the Crown Prince has chosen victims who weren't entirely helpless before his rank, however. While the Lady Gwyn was sharing out bits of food as she cooked, claiming it needed to be tasted by multiple people because of your paranoia about being in the Usurper's seat, she drew them out like string."

 

"And the Lady Walda?"

 

That was one of Oberyn's main concerns. When she'd first come to them, the Frey girl was as sweet as sunshine, but she also possessed no discernment at all when it came to what should and should not be shared. Lady Myria and Lady Jynessa both claimed she was a smart girl, and wary, but victim to flattery and a desire to please. They said she was making progress, but he still worried.

 

"The lady did very well." Ulwyck praised. "She twittered on with perfect nerves about not having credited that a prince so fair could possibly be cruel enough to rip anyone's tongue out, then she looked horrified - likely genuinely - at all the right moments. With Lady Gwyn plying them with thick stew and other tidbits and whispering that their tales couldn't possibly be as bad as the ones at the Rock, a lot was said."

 

"For instance?" Lord Gargalen raised his iron gray eyebrows.

 

"For _instance_ , the prince has long tormented animals. He likes to release his hounds on fawns or target them with a crossbow his mother got him as a gift a year ago. Lately, however, there are tales that he's having the cheaper whores his father visits brought up at night so he can murder them as well."

 

"Fucking seven hells." Oberyn cursed quietly in revulsion and rose from the bath to begin toweling off. "And this is to be our future _King_. Wasn't Aerys bad enough?"

 

"Apparently not." Lord Gargalen replied dryly. "Though I've learned things as well. I had a meeting with Lord Tywin himself while you were out with the ship and the Lady Arya."

 

" _What_?" Oberyn froze and turned to look at his uncle.

 

"Oh, it quite surprised me as well." Lord Gargalen offered him a thin smile, and his black eyes were as cold and dead as one of the huge white bellied sharks that liked to pluck seals out of the water off the coast of Salt Shore. "You know I would have been out with you had I not been so in need of rest this morning. So imagine my shock when, shortly after I rose, an invitation came to dine with the Lord of Casterly Rock himself."

 

Oberyn frowned as he tied the towel around his waist and leaned against the mantle, waiting.

 

"Nothing of importance was said, of course, it was a fishing expedition and a chance for the man to take my measure." Lord Gargalen went on. "What I found most interesting was the clear reality of the Old Lion's health being worse than mine. The first time it has ever been so, I imagine. Then there is the fact that he was obviously still interested in at least seeing if he could establish some agricultural trade for the coming winter with Dorne despite there being no chance in any of the Seven Hells any of our people would agree to that."

 

"I have something to tell you." Oberyn paused, then looked at his friend. He had yet to pass along the information on the ledger to any beyond his wife and Lady Gwyn. "It is of the utmost secrecy. I only tell you both because you are my blood, or as good as."

 

Ser Ulwyck smiled and nodded at that acknowledgement of the bond they shared through Ellaria and the children she'd blessed Oberyn with. Oberyn had always made it clear that, while he had no wish to speak false vows in some traditional marriage, he'd have wed Ellaria years before if it was politically sound. They could have made their own vows… but that was a grief he wasn't going to linger on with matters at hand. Instead he explained, fetching the ledger from where it was hidden beneath the false bottom of one of his wife's trunks, locked twice behind what he learned were the nearly incomprehensible northern puzzle locks she favored.

 

"Seven _bloody fucking hells_ and every demon inside them screwing sideways." The knight of Hellholt was gaping, his voice quiet despite the room having been gone over by two separate direwolves and Oberyn himself. "His foot soldiers, you say?"

 

"His entire army, other than the knights or any mercenaries hired in." Oberyn agreed. "The Miners' Guild is the reason why the Westerlands could always field a professional army instead of disorganized smallfolk as foot soldiers. If we get them valid and accurate information confirming that the bloody old bastard had stolen from them, there will be an _open revolt i_ n the Westerlands. According to Lady Gwyn they've replaced the Lannisters holding the seat there with other family lines before in the past. As recent as just before the Targaryens left their island, no less."

 

"Your brother will be _thrilled_ ." Lord Gargalen murmured, the black eyes that Oberyn's father had passed down to his two sons hungry upon the book. Elia had been the only child of their late mother who had her own large, melting brown gaze. "The question becomes, _how_ do we get precise and accurate figures of the King's debt with the Lord Hand guarding them and the Imp of Casterly Rock currently auditing the books."

 

"What?" Oberyn scowled.

 

"That was another thing I learned. Tyrion Lannister has been appointed the King's Counter."

 

" _Shit_." Oberyn muttered, then shook his head. "It matters not. There will be some servant who can be bribed, or some old creature of Lord Baelish's lingering about, out of work."

 

"We'll find someone." Lord Gargalen agreed and sat forward, his eyes avid. "I heard that you have a Name."

 

"For Rhaenys, yes." Oberyn breathed out and nodded slowly. "You were right about using a gentle touch with Lady Gwyn. It worked better than my own methods. I've already told you of House Frey. Stevron Frey told me that mine niece was murdered by a knight of House Lorch. Lady Gwyn has it as Ser Amory Lorch. Apparently he _brags_ of his actions."

 

There was a long moment of silence as the hate of three men expanded to fill the room.

 

"Were that I were younger, nephew, I'd challenge you to deal with that in some way myself. That child was a delight and so like your sister. Elia… with my own daughters gone...." The old man observed then shook his head, gritting his teeth as Oberyn moved to grip his uncle's shoulder. He remembered his Uncle's horror and grief after he'd lost his daughters; they'd been at the Water Gardens then, and his uncle had come to stay there to heal his soul for a time. "I am not, however, so I trust you to make it painful."

 

Oberyn knew his smile was not the sort to offer in happiness. It was met by a similar expression from Lord Gargalen. Ser Ulwyck's smile was absolutely mad, as was appropriate for a Uller.

 

"We must all get ready for the feast." Lord Gargalen finally spoke again, opening his eyes and reaching for his cane. He couldn't quite leave it alone, however. "Is this Amory Lorch part of the Queen's guards? They're all from the Westerlands, I noticed."

 

"No, Lord Tywin has apparently lost patience with the man's assuming on his past deeds for favor. According to Gwyn he might show up for the Tourney. I've already begun making sure I hear of it if he does show. The esteem the smallfolk hold us in is very useful in the city, Uncle."

"So I've heard." The older man rose and paused again. "That is the only name?"

 

"For now." Oberyn found that the hungry, fearsome beast living in his breast was calmer than was its wont. "You've seen the child, though. The Lady Gwyn grows less timid, and with the death of her timidity, her silence will expire as well. We must show her that the Old Lion is not invincible. That, I've learned, is the key to Lady Gwyn's confidence."

 

"A task we shall likely find allies for amongst his own kin and their actions."

 

Oberyn smiled and turned towards the bedchamber and his own trunks as his Uncle and Ulwyck left him. He had a lot to look forward to this evening. A chance for greater vengeance, for more information, and to torment the Usurper further with what Oberyn had and he did not. He had, after all, made a very specific request towards his wife's dress for the evening. One that the sweet young Frey was too innocent to intuit the purpose behind, and Gwyn would likely support out of her love of mischief.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra smoothed her hands down the front of her gown and tried not to be too satisfied. The Queen wasn't the only one who could wear gold, and while part of her felt petty for thinking it, she was satisfied with her appearance. There was a certain pleasure in knowing that her dark hair would make the dress seem brighter and her skin fairer. Not to mention the simple fact that she was less than half the Queen's age. The Queen was a great beauty, yes, but she was hard as old teak and cold and insincere. Lyarra was learning that men lusted after women who reminded them of their lost youth, or at least other men did. She was happy that her husband mostly just lusted and wasn't perverse about it other than on a matter of scale.

 

"You're radiant, darling."

 

Oberyn's whisper in her ear made her smile as she stood beside him behind their chairs at the High Table and waited for the King. She knew she looked good, and while that mattered less to her than many things, there was a pleasure in hearing him tell her so. Just two hours before he was murmuring such compliments against her breasts before dipping lower to try and make her scream.

 

Lyarra had given in. They were surrounded by comfortingly thick stone walls. She wasn't going to be tricked into being a spectacle in a tent again, but she'd felt safe enough to enjoy herself without the same restraint in their own bed behind a locked door that was made of three-inch-thick oak boards.

 

"You're most certainly the handsomest prince in the room."

 

"I am the _only_ prince in the room." Lyarra smirked at him out of the corner of her mouth and mentally awarded herself a small triumph when, despite their location, the fine lines around her husband's eyes crinkled upwards.

 

Her gown was, like her wedding gown, part of her trousseau. Again, like her wedding gown, they'd had a slight problem securing quite enough fabric to make it in a traditional Northern style. Instead Gwyn had improvised with Sansa's help. The golden gown was made of golden-yellow silk damask in a stylized pattern of palm leaves.

 

Having only been able to get a couple of yards of the fabric, Gwyn and Sansa had decided to cut it the long way and make two golden panels for the dress, front and back. Gleaming yellow-gold ran from a high, barrel neck that had relieved Lyarra greatly down to the floor in front. In the back there'd been extra fabric that ran into a short train. The sides of the dress were black silk. So were the long, pendant sleeves which fit tightly to her wrist and then flared and trailed downward in sudden fullness. Touches of copper embroidery done in Sansa's delicate stitchery ran in a line of interlocking rayed suns and golden spears down the edges of the black fabric where it met the gold.

 

"You are feeling well?"

 

"Yes," Lyarra answered her husband's quiet question, realizing he'd picked up on the fact that she was lightheaded as she rose from the curtsey she'd dropped into when the King entered the Great Hall. "I wish I'd eaten more at the tea, but I can fix that well enough now."

 

Her husband frowned at her, but any further conversation was rendered impossible. As Oberyn pulled out the chair so she could sit, Lyarra noticed that the King's eyes were raking up and down her body in a proprietary fashion and that strange, lost and longing look was back in his blue eyes. Thankfully his eyes flickered past her and Lyarra was never so glad that today was an informal feast.

 

The King and Queen now had their own tables on the dias and the Dornish party was at the King's along with Lyarra's father and sister. The Queen was entertaining House Tyrell along with Lord Tywin. Prince Joffrey was nowhere to be seen. According to Lyarra's father, he was to stay in his quarters until his grandfather and he left for the Westerlands. Through his Hand, the King was, _thankfully_ , already making moves to investigate and at least offer some reparations to the merchants his Heir had maimed.

 

"Well, your daughters have certainly made the table prettier tonight, Ned." King Robert drew his eyes away from her to look at her father with a wide grin splitting his beard as he took a long pull from his ale horn. "Who's this dark haired little beauty at your side?"

 

"My youngest daughter, Your Grace, the Lady Arya."

 

"And a fair lady she is." The King offered the compliment as if beauty was the greatest a girl-child could aspire to. Then he ignored Arya. "Ned, why didn't you bring that boy of yours south? The Blackfish would have been a fine name to add to the tourney! We've only three days to wait for it."

 

"You mentioned it last night. Are you sure it's wise to host a tourney with the brigand problems you've been having in the Crownlands?"

 

"Brigands are but cowards, Ned, and I routed them well enough not too many days ago." The King scoffed as he tore the drumstick off of a roast duck that had been set whole before him on a bed of roast potatoes and fresh vegetables. "I'm sending out Ser Mandon Moore of the Kingsguard tomorrow morning. He'll take a force of men with him and run what's left of that group to ground. Then, after the Tourney, I'll go out with a larger force and end them myself. The fight will do me good, Ned. I've not felt so alive in years as I felt putting my hammer into the face of that bastard leading the brigands."

 

Lyarra didn't wince at the casual use of the term 'bastard' as an insult. She was used to it. She did, however, lean into her husband's hand a little when he reached around her to drape his arm over her shoulders. He'd already pulled their chairs close as he had the night before; with memories of Prince Joffrey's mad display, she appreciated the proximity.

 

"I could go with you!" Arya offered. "I'd fight. I can fight!"

 

" _Ayra_." Her father huffed, but the King's loud, delighted laughter boomed out and covered his response.

 

"So we've got a wild little she-wolf here, have we?" The King was grinning. "Where'd a pretty little thing like you learn of the song of swords?"

 

"Lyarra taught me. So did Robb and Theon did too, some, but Robb and Lyarra are better. Theon can hit anything with a bow, though. So he taught me that, though I'm not so good yet." Arya bragged. "And Prince Oberyn has taught me a little of the spear, but I tripped over it and like the sword better. He says that in Dorne I can practice with the Sand Snakes!"

 

The amusement faded from the king's broad face. Oberyn chose that moment to lean forward and smile.

 

"The Lady Arya speaks the truth. She's a talented young swordswoman. I look forward to introducing her to my daughters, though I suspect that I will lose her affections at that point. Obara, at least, will shamelessly steal her."

 

"I would have thought the North long-tired of having their daughters stolen." The King said darkly.

 

"If Obara is willing to deal with my sister at her wildest, she may have her." Lyarra huffed in hopes of lightening the mood, but gave Arya a grin to soften it. Her sister forgot her manners and stuck her tongue out at her sister across the table, prompting a smile from Lord Renly further down the table. He gently elbowed the shocked little girl sitting next to him, then crossed his eyes and stuck his own tongue out at the little lady who had to be his niece, prompting a giggle.

 

A handsome man around her father's age in a fine sea green tunic, with fair hair laughed at Lord Renly's antics. Lyarra's father chuckled, but gave Arya a stern look while he did it. The King did not seem amused.

 

"You've another daughter, Ned. Why isn't she with you?"

 

"She's keeping her mother company." Lyarra's father answered turning back to the King. "Cat would have never forgiven me if I left her with only one of our children. Robb is, after all, out with the Banners right now."

 

"I can attest to the _forgiving_ nature of wives, true enough."

 

"I think that would depend on the wife." Oberyn greeted the King's sour words with a soft purr of his own and Lyarra felt her husband lift up her hand and turn it over, kissing the Mark upon her wrist and making her shiver while she'd been distracted nodding at a server to place more of the marinated chicken breast upon her plate, along with a serving of the spiced vegetables. She was famished.

 

"I wouldn't know, I've only ever had the one." The King said humorlessly and then turned to her, trying to ignore the man who still had an arm draped over Lyarra's shoulders and had tucked her against his side. "Still eating like a real person, I see, and not some half-starved revenant."

 

"I don't think the Others eat." Arya offered, frowning in confusion. "They're dead."

 

The King let out a great guffaw of laughter and Lyarra's father smiled. Lyarra reached out with her foot under the table, brushing past her husband's legs, and nudged her sister when she saw Arya scowl. When Arya looked up, Oberyn threw her a wink, making Arya smile as she dug back into her plate.

 

"Dead inside, maybe." The King commented, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced at the Queen, then back at Lyarra as his eyes dipped down to stare at her dress. "You look beautiful in that color."

 

"Thank you, Your Grace."

 

Belatently Lyarra realized that, other than the copper embroidery, she was wearing Baratheon colors. Cutting her eyes towards her husband, she decided it wasn't an accident. Nor could she just blame Gwyn, who was now shooting a glance down the table and smirking at the way the Queen looked over at her husband and his guests with narrow, angry green eyes. _Lovely_ , two years of work to temper Gwyn's less honest and less kind impulses and it too her husband, what? A few days of tepid trust and the most minor encouragement to undo all of that hard work.

 

"Truly, have you ever seen a lady so fair, Your Grace?" Oberyn leaned forward and brushed a slow kiss across her cheekbone. "Or so modest. I find myself struggling to get her to wear jewels, though I would drape her in them."

 

Lyarra was wearing her circlet again, this time arranged with only a single chain and her hair back in the golden net she'd worn at the feast at the Twins. Other than her wedding ring, however, she had no jewelry on. She hadn't felt it was necessary with such a lavish gown.

 

"I've seen one with such beauty." The King said tersely.

 

"Ah, I forget." Oberyn allowed. "I had other concerns at Harrenhal all those years ago. The Lady Lyanna was your betrothed, and my sister was much on my mind given her condition."

 

"I imagine she was, after the damned dragon shamed her in front of the whole assembly."

 

Lyarra stiffened when she felt her husband's rage flare. Without thinking she turned to face her husband, brushing their knees and legs together given how close they sat. A server had just settled the platter, covered with a flotilla of small tarts no bigger than the palm of Rickon's hand, in front of her. Each one had a mix of sweetened cheese and blueberries filling it, and she'd just taken a bite of the one in her hand.

 

"Try this." Lyarra instructed her husband, her worry leaving her tone low and a little breathless.

 

Oberyn's eyes snapped to hers and his lips turned up. A moment later she realized her mistake. Her husband leaned forward and his lips pressed against hers, his tongue darting out to press against her teeth. Lyarra allowed it, not sure what else to do as his hand came behind her neck and angled her head into the kiss. If he was kissing her then he wasn't turning his anger or the sharp edge of his tongue on the King... and Lyarra wanted a kiss anyway even as she felt herself blush and knew every eye in the Great Hall had to be on her.

 

The kiss stretched on. Lyarra momentarily forgot where she was to the feel of his lips and tongue tangling with hers. He pulled back from the kiss, licking his lips slowly with his black eyes half-lidded.

 

"You're right, darling. It is _very_ sweet."

 

Lyarra realized she was still holding the pastry when he plucked it from her fingers and popped the rest of it in her mouth. Lyarra could feel the King's eyes on her and caught her father's unhappy expression out of the corner of her eye. Thankfully, her sister saved her.

 

"Lyarra, _ew_ , don't kiss him in public." Arya Stark complained loudly into the sudden silence at the High Table. "People are _eating_!"

 

Lyarra burst into giggles despite herself and, thankfully, the King burst into loud laughter as well, signaling others to do the same. Even Oberyn huffed out a chuckle before shooting Arya a look that she returned in a firm glare as the little minx took a large, retaliatory bite out of her roast venison. Blushing, Lyarra tucked a non-existent curl behind her ear and snagged another tart from the tray. Her husband snatched her hand up and licked her fingers. Lyarra raised his hand to her mouth in return and very deliberately pretended to bite him. That tore a laugh out of her husband.

 

"May I take that as a promise for later?"

 

"We already had a _nap_ today, my Prince."

 

"But I'm feeling," He purred at her, his accent thick. " _Extraordinarily_ taxed, darling. I believe we should both retire early."

 

"That's because you're old." Arya offered again, obviously having decided that Lyarra needed some kind of protection since her husband was making her blush.

 

Oberyn shot the girl an exasperated look while the King let out a snort of laughter. Then, to her shock, King Robert gestured grandly.

 

"No-one's going to bed yet." The King roared. "It's high time we danced. Minstrels, play something, dammit!"

 

The group of musicians in the corner of the room immediately struck up a proper, courtly dance. It was the sort of thing that Lyarra had only shared a few lessons with Robb. Lady Catelyn had determined she needn't take up so much of the dance instructor's time, if any, fairly quickly.

 

The Queen rose gracefully on her twin brother's arm and Lyarra took a moment to admire the gleaming white and silver armor the Kingsguard. They truly did look magnificent. Ser Barristan, the only member of the guard with half the renown of past groups, stood stoically on duty while the man known as the Kingslayer made a glowing figure in silver and gold while his sister stepped out onto the floor in a layered gown of cloth of gold and wine colored silk.

 

This part, Lyarra thought, Sansa would like. She'd already written her sister a letter, one that was far gentler than the one she'd sent to Lady Stark. It had the same intention, however, of separating Sansa from her dreams that all in King's Landing was like a song and Court was a place of chivalry.

 

"Shall we dance?" Oberyn's words, whispered in her ear filled her with a mix of chagrin and eagerness.

 

"I don't know the steps." She confessed and Oberyn blinked at her before smiling.

 

"You don't need to." He quipped and rose to bow and hold out his hand in her direction. "It is my duty to lead, is it not?"

 

Eagerly Lyarra accepted her husband's offer. She was delighted to find that, while the steps were complex, they were nothing she struggled with. Her husband led her into the line of dancers and the two columns of men and women weaving out of each other's grip. She quickly found how fun it was, and how much like footwork with a sword, dancing could be as she wove back and forth with the others, separating and coming together with her husband.

 

"Again?" Lyarra asked a little eagerly as the dancing changed and her husband allowed himself an honest grin.

 

"As you wish."

 

The next dance awas a little looser and a little wilder. A country song not unlike those Gwyn loved so well, it involved a lot of twirling about. Lyarra enjoyed it breathlessly, but soon found herself leaning on her husband, gripping his forearms.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

"Just some dizziness, it will pass." Lyarra breathed back, reassuring him.

 

To her left she could see Gwyn dancing with the profoundly handsome young knight, Ser Loras Tyrell. Gwyn looked rather shocked that he'd asked her. Lyarra had no idea why. Gwyn had looked wonderful made up in a rich, dark blue gown, that had been a surprise present from Lyarra that she'd taken out of the fabric meant for her trousseau. With her pale golden hair drawn back into a complex braided knot she also looked older, and the gold choker she'd made from her father's cloak chain gleamed against the softly tanned skin of her neck.

 

Near them Lord Renly Baratheon was dancing with the blue-eyed, black-haired girl she knew was his niece, Shireen. The daughter of the late Lord Stannis was offering a shy little smile and occasionally shooting a broader grin at a hoary older knight wearing a black surcoat featuring a ship and… was than an onion? Either way, the girl the King's brother had stuck his tongue out at earlier looked as though she couldn't believe that there was a such a thing as dancing, or that she got to enjoy it.

 

Ser Domeric Bolton was in the grips of a girl with reddish brown hair and a pinched face. His expression suggested that he would have liked to escape from the dance very much. When another knight moved to cut in, he ducked out, handing his partner over without protest and heading quickly for his chair, a plate, and an excuse not to dance again.

 

Then Lyarra spotted Walda. The heavyset girl looked sweet in a pink satin dress with lace trim. Her lemon yellow hair had been pulled back in braids from her face and then twisted into a spiral knot at the back of her neck. The usual cheerful expression she'd worn since leaving the Twins was gone and its place was now filled with unease. She was dancing with a man who looked older than Oberyn. Lyarra didn't recognize him and hadn't been introduced to the man wearing brightly colored and lavish clothing as he danced with the young lady.

 

"Oberyn…"

 

"I see it. It appears the Lady Walda has attracted an opportunistic merchant." He tucked her hand into his arm and led her back. "Will you sit with your father while I cut in and put the man in his place?"

 

 _'And not risk yourself, get into trouble, or pull the sword you're not wearing on any weasel-lords.'_ Lyarra finished his words in her head and then almost rolled her eyes before she remembered herself. She understood why he'd be concerned given the baby, but he was also being ridiculous.

 

"I shall."

 

" _Good_."

 

"Hello, Father." Lyarra dropped a kiss on her father's cheek before sitting beside him, smiling as her husband went off to rescue Walda from her obviously unwanted partner. "Is that your _third_ piece of cake?"

 

"If you mention it in your next letter to your Uncle Benjen I will deny it." Her father smirked. "You should have another piece."

 

Lyarra felt her stomach lurch a little. Both with a memory of the tense tea-party-with-no-tea, and simply because of the lemon-smell.

 

"Not lemon-cake."

 

"Ah." Her father's eyes flicked to her abdomen in understanding and he set the remaining bits of cake on a plate and nudged it away.

 

"You sent Arya to bed?"

 

"She kicked Ser Jaime in the shins when he asked her to dance."

 

Lyarra heard a distinct note of satisfaction in his voice as he said it.

 

"So she'll be getting _extra_ dessert."

 

"Not from her Father." Ned Stark replied firmly, his chin set and his gray eyes merciless despite the smile he was likely fighting inside. "That was insufferably rude and cast our House and House Martell in a bad light."

 

"She kicked a _Lannister_ , Father, when Oberyn finds out he's going to give her extra dessert and teach her how to tip her boots with poison pins." Lyarra muttered back, dropping her voice.

 

"So Ned, still can't dance worth a damn, can you?"

 

Lyarra nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of the King's voice nearby and rose from her seat automatically thanks to Lady Jynessa's lessons. Beside her, her father rose in a more leisurely fashion. He also stuck a hand under Lyarra's elbow as she wobbled, her head spinning at how fast she'd risen.

 

"No, I'm afraid not." The Lord of Winterfell agreed with a smirk, though Lyarra knew that wasn’t true. Her father was actually a fine dancer, and he enjoyed it well enough if he liked his partner. "You were always the better dancer, Robert."

 

"Aye…" The King had sat through all of the dances, continuing to drink and eat. Now his face was flushed red and sweat glistened on his brow despite it not being that hot in the Great Hall. "Lyan- Princess Lyarra, I'd like a dance."

 

That really wasn't a polite way to ask a lady, let alone a princess married to someone else, for a dance. Lyarra also wasn't blind to the fact that this was the King, and the King was drunk. Not knowing what else to do, she rose, curtsied, and agreed. Oberyn would just have to deal with himself, it was only one dance and what else was she going to do? Refuse the man who sat on the _Iron Throne_?

 

To her dear regret, the King called for a rowdy Stormlands dance. She caught her father scowling out of the corner of her eye. She also felt Oberyn's spike in temper. She was too busy concentrating on not allowing the King, who was lurching as he went through the steps, to either trod on her feet or deal her a blow with his off hand as he gestured through the dance.

 

Worse, however, was the spinning. The dance involved walking forward and backwards ten paces and every other pace stepping away and then back, spinning as you went if you were the female partner. Lyarra had to mind her dangling sleeves, the skirt of her gown, and everything else given the King's state and the spinning compounded it. The slight dizziness she'd felt with Oberyn there to mind the steps and lead compounded itself greatly and she grew short of breath.

 

"Lady Lyarra?"

 

Lyarra was about to correct the King. She was a _princess_ now, little as she still felt comfortable with it. Forgetting her title was an insult to her husband and the House he was welcoming her into more kindly than she'd ever expected to be welcomed into any family.

 

She didn't get the chance, however, as gray began to eat away at the edges of her vision and the room began to spin. Thoughtlessly she clutched at the King's wrists as he knees went weak. A large, meaty hand reached out, going behind her shoulders and bracing her upright. She saw the King's lips move, but heard nothing until a moment later two hands thinner, but still strong, and very much male moved to take her away from King Robert. Very unfortunately Lyarra became aware of her surroundings again to find herself cushioned against her husband's chest, barely on her feet to hear him exchanging words with the King.

 

"... _-y_ _wife_." Oberyn was not yelling, but his voice was low and deadly, hissing like the venomous thing he was. "I have done nothing to her."

 

"If you have not, why is a healthy girl not yet five-and-ten swooning on the dance floor!"

 

_"I-."_

 

Lyarra's mind was still swirling and she was so alarmed she couldn't think and didn't think before she weakly blurted out the truth.

 

"I'm with child." The King made a strangled sound and her husband was as stiff as a bronze statue as he held her upright. "I- I, my Prince, I think I should sit."

 

"No, you are for bed." His voice was taut. "You've overexerted yourself today. I never should have allowed it."

 

The next moment she was in his arms again, swung up with one of his arms behind her back and the other behind her knees. She was dimly aware that she'd done something she shouldn't. It didn't matter, however, because the sudden change in position swept her off into a realm of blackness where nothing could reach her.

 

* * *

 

" _Mother_!" Robb grinned and flung himself down from his horse to draw her into his arms. For the first time in what felt like ages Lady Catelyn Stark felt that she could breathe again.

 

She had one more of her family home with her. Bran was on his way with a good escort and none-other than her own beloved Uncle Brynden with him. Just the thought of seeing the confidant and guiding hand of her childhood again made her heart ease.

 

"Your House's name is clear, Mother. Father wrote, didn't he?"

 

"He did." Cat smiled, something inside her relaxing further and then she stepped back and sighed as she caught sight of the rest of his party. "Robb, we have _guests_."

 

"Of course we do." He grinned and stepped down. "Lord Keavan Forrester, my mother, the Lady Catelyn Stark. Smalljon, it's good to have you back, and you know my mother fairly well. Lord Torrhen Karstark, this is my mother, Lady Catelyn Stark."

 

Cat felt more in her element here, despite the fairly off-hand exchange of greetings her son had just given. It was more in the Northern fashion to do so, and it spoke of a trust that relieved her as greatly as it worried her. She made them all welcome and Robb offered bread and salt. Once the group had split up, she was more than grateful to sit in her solar with her son after he'd spun Sansa around in his arms and put Rickon up onto his shoulders as required. Somehow, even the direwolves that had so alarmed her when they'd first been brought back, were a joy. The sight of Greywind loping about with Lady and wrestling Shaggydog was a balm to a great number of motherly worries.

 

"I have fresh letters that arrived the night before last." Cat was still in no situation to pause and mother her son, however much parts of her wanted to. There was too much of importance to discuss. "You have one from your father and one from both of your sisters."

 

Robb looked at her in surprise. Cat felt both better and worse for her momentary pride in herself. What did it say of her that she could be proud that she hadn't stumbled over calling her husband's bastard 'sister' to her son? Whatever else was amiss in that shameful situation, Lyarra had loved all of Cat's children dearly. _Family, Duty, Honor, she_ reminded herself and smiled as she fetched the letters from the casket on her desk and handed him his. _Humility_.

 

"I had letters as well, and I would have you read them after we have spoken." Cat went on. Her mind was much occupied with the first letter she'd ever received from the girl she'd grown up calling _'Snow'_ more than any other name.

 

_Lady Catelyn,_

 

_I must beg your forgiveness for writing to you thusly. I am sure you'd hoped to never hear from me again in this life. I did not send this raven to discommode you. I assure you that I send you this letter in haste and out of a sense of duty that I might inform you of events in the capital. I do this as one Stark to another, and for the good of the family we share. Only feet away from me my husband also writes to his own brother, the Prince of Dorne. Just as I, duty and affection for his sibling compels him to make this known in all haste._

 

_Mere hours ago, the King hosted a feast in honor of his guests. Prince Joffrey was not in attendance when the feast began and it was much remarked upon. The King himself was dissatisfied and I assumed the Prince chose to avoid the Great Hall in protest of the snub the King delivered to Queen Cersei when the Crown greeted our party as we arrived at the Red Keep._

 

_This was proven false when Prince Joffrey did appear. He walked in late. The prince is Sansa's age, with long, curling, golden hair and a slightly precious appearance in his silks. He is also confident to the point of arrogance and has to be mad to do what he did. When he arrived, he came to the feast with a bucket of human tongues ripped freshly from the mouths of merchants who gossiped that the King was weak against the brigands, unable to bring food to the city, and not protecting his people._

 

_If this was what they were saying, at least the last words they spoke were true. When we arrived there was nearly a riot of the smallfolk. It calmed, but they are all hungry and the price of food in the capital is astounding. Unless, of course, you are the King or one of his guests. That is beside the point, however, forgive my rambling._

 

_The King was livid at his son's actions and the public display he made of them. As you often told me, I am no gentle, well-bred lady, but even I was aghast at what I saw. I cannot express the sound that bucket made when it turned it over and its contents dropped out onto a waiting platter._

 

_Yet, beyond the simple disquiet the act itself spawned in me, I was frightened by the gleeful expression on the boy's over-pretty face. There he stood in golden ringlets and gleaming silk robes looking more like a princess than I do, and he was happy to have performed that atrocity. The whole court was dismayed beyond my power to express. Even now, Father is closeted with King Robert, Lord Arryn, and Lord Twyin Lannister in the aftermath of it all. Prince Joffrey was sent to his quarters under guard. His mother, Queen Cersei, had to be led away by the Kingslayer. Her protests over Robert's 'rough handling' of her son were strident and made for all the court to hear._

 

_I write you this letter to beseech you to look beyond all of the years of our past. Do not think of it penned by your husband's bastard. I have met Lord Tully now, and perhaps I feel I know you better. So say instead that this letter has been written by a blood-ally of your children, one who values their health and safety above all else and knows the duty she owes her kin and all other duties her marriage has brought unto her. From this, trust me to convey truthfully my concerns for the safety of the Crown in Prince Joffrey's future hands, and my fears of any alliance brought in marriage between the Crown Prince and any maiden._

 

_I write to you in respect for the woman who raised the sisters and brother I love, and my father's Lady Wife. If this tale must make the Kingdom nervous, it must make the Lannisters moreso. They face suspicion and hatred by many of the other Great Houses. The Westerlands bears terrible burdens because of the Plague. Winter is coming and Lord Tywin will have to import food at great cost. The Lions are encircled by troubles, and Crown does not stand strong. They must look for a strong marriage alliance and are likely to also look towards weakening the the new ties between Dorne and the North._

 

_I have spoken to my Prince on the subject. He fears and I do agree that it is not unlikely that there will be an offer for Sansa's hand forthcoming from the Crown. My Lady, I know you will read this and your mind will burn with every tale you told me of bastards seeking to deny their trueborn brothers and sisters what they were rightfully owed in life. You will think that I wear a princess' circlet and would deny my sister a queen's crown._

 

_I tell you now that I and mine husband believe Sansa could wear a queen's crown easily. I plead with you not to take your sweetest daughter and make her a queen as Rhaella was Queen to Aerys. I do not ask you to take my word alone, as I know it would mean little. Instead trust your Lord and Husband. Trust him when he writes to you next, and read past whatever he doesn't write to you of in detail because he would wish himself harm before upsetting a woman he loves as well as you._

 

_Lyarra Martell, Princess of Dorne_

 

"What did Father write you?" Robb asked, jarring Cat from her thoughts.

 

She watched as her son picked up his letters and greedily began reading through them. The first, Arya's, made him grin. Then he began to frown as he read through his letter from Lord Stark.

 

"It is more what - what Lyarra wrote me that I find disturbing." Cat watched her son's dark auburn head whip up as he stared at her.

 

" _Lyarra_ wrote you?"

 

"Yes." Cat answered simply and raised her eyebrows, prompting her son to blush slightly and clear his throat.

 

"What of?" He looked down at his own letter from the bastard, and then looked up again. He was, Cat noted wryly, alight with curiosity. Her eldest also looked dubious.

 

"First, I would know what your father wrote to you of King's Landing." She went on. "In my letter he alluded to something very disturbing that the Crown Prince did, but he said not what."

 

"I'd gotten to the part where he wrote of arriving and finding the city half-starved and in love with the Martells." He held the letter in the light of the windows again as he read on.

 

Halfway through Robb Stark began to curse, and when Cat cleared her throat he just shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. He offered her no apology. She wasn't sure whether she was proud at seeing the boy who'd left her two moons before had come back to her so much closer to being a man and a proud young lord, or lament her son's poor manners.

 

"Father says that Prince Joffrey had the tongues ripped out of some merchants for gossiping, and then he presented them to the King in public." Robb's face was pale with disgust. "The King was wroth."

 

"Yes, I imagine."

 

"Mother?"

 

" _Robb…_ " Cat breathed out slowly and rubbed her hands together. "Does your Father write of anything else?"

 

"He's asked about my progress with our survey of the trees, but I have a letter ready to send on that immediately." Robb frowned. "I think I need to add to it. The survey of population proceeds apace, but… this disturbs me. How did the man of father's stories end up with a son like this?"

 

"Who can understand the ways of the Gods?" Cat tried not to think of the Mark on Lyarra's wrist.

 

"Mayhaps Lyarra's marriage was a kind of warning as much as a punishment. If father hadn't gone south with her, how would we have known of this? You know how long it takes gossip to travel north from Southron courts." Robb's comment prompted a wince as Cat thought of the tales of Lysa and how long they had taken to reach her, riding a Viper's forked tongue as they had been. When Robb opened Lyarra's letter he paled. "She thinks they'll ask for _Sansa_ for the _Prince of Tongues_?!"

 

"Don't call him that, Robb." Cat said firmly, both in the name of her ability to eat dinner and because it was unwise to get in the habit of giving mad rulers uncomplimentary nicknames.

 

"Sorry Mother, that was foolish of me. Still… Father never would betroth any of his daughters to a madman, no matter what the rank." Her son admitted, pulling a face and shaking his head as he changed the subject. "Father wants to rebuild Moat Cailin, did he write you of that?"

 

"Yes, two letters ago."

 

"Aye," Robb nodded, still reading through Lyarra's letter as he spoke. "That's why I brought Torrhen Karstark with me. He's a fine engineer. Well, that and as a buffer against having Alys Karstark sent here to torment me. If she'd wanted a chance at being my wife, she damned well shouldn't have spied on me."

 

Cat smiled slightly, approving.

 

"And the others?"

 

"The Greatjon said he couldn't stand listening to his eldest son pine away anymore. Oh, did the lady of House Frey coming here to foster arrive yet?"

 

"No, Lady Roslin Frey is coming north with your Great-Uncle Brynden."

 

"Bran wrote me about that, but he didn't mention the lady."

 

"No, I don't imagine he did." Cat smiled. "He's entirely delighted to finally be a squire."

 

"We'll see if that delight holds through countless hours of fetching food and drink and polishing someone else's armor."

 

Cat sighed at the very Northern expression of disdain for the duties that led to knighthood, but said nothing. Her son would be a Northern lord. She'd already seen the damage that her perception as a Southron with too much influence on her children was like. It had been hidden from her eyes by Ned's love for so many years, but now she knew that such moments and words would be essential to reinforce Robb's rule one day. So, for that matter, would loyal bannermen of his generation.

 

"Why is Lord Keavan with your party?"

 

"I honestly believe he was weary and lacking industry." Robb allowed. "His father doesn't give him much to do at his own keep but hunt and mind his sister. As much as he's a good brother, he wants the company of men his own age and rank. He's been damned useful to me, though. His father seldom leaves their lands so he's spent the last few years more in the saddle than out. Sometimes I think the man knows half the North's ale preference for all that he's solemn by nature. He's restless now that all of the deals worked out between our banners at Lyarra's wedding mean he has no reason to leave his father's keep."

 

"And Theon made no protest to this?" Cat cautioned her son slightly in her tone, but not as much as she once would have. "He's always been possessive of your friendship."

 

Cat had vowed before the Gods to be warmer to their hostage as well. Theon had been but a child when he came to them, and if they could not teach the Ironborn kindness and decency through a child they'd raised nearly as their own then there truly was no hope. If her coldness towards the boy damaged that she would have no-one to blame but herself; Theon adored Robb as much as any elder brother could a favored younger son.

 

"I think Keavan and the others have done him good." Robb kept reading his sister's letter, but chuckled. "You know how Theon is. He's always trying to impress because his place here is… what it is. Keavan's family is near enough to the coast that they hate the Ironborn and he doesn't like men who jape about women. At first they were at each other's throats, but eventually Theon got it through his head that Keavan takes things too seriously and Theon managed to express to Keavan than he grew up with Lyarra, Sansa, and Arya and loves them as well as he would his own sister. The fact that he, _um…_ goes for certain kinds of _entertainment_ doesn't mean he plans to take Salt Wives or abuse anyone. His tongue just gets away from him."

 

"And the Smalljon and Torrhen Karstark?"

 

"Smalljon can drink Theon under the table and throw him up into the air one-handed. Theon's skill with a bow impresses the hell out of a man who's as strong as a bear, but as nearsighted as Gwyn is. Torrhen is confident, accomplished, and sure of himself despite being a third son… Mother, Theon's just… he's had no friends but me since he came. It's good for him to know and care about others. It's good for others to care for him, and for him to form friendships in the North."

 

"Yes… it would be." Cat admitted, and then frowned when her son made a noise like a scalded feline. "Robb? What's wrong?!"

 

"Lyarra's _with_ _child_!"

 

" _What_?" That hadn't been in any of her letters…

 

"She's - she's-!" Robb repeated, rising furiously to his feet as he had to work the words past his outrage. "That dirty, no-good, rapacious snake has - has-."

 

"Done what any husband will presumably do?" Cat replied in pure exasperation. "Robb, honestly, the man has seen eight healthy children born. Of course Lyarra was going to be a mother. Even I know that's something she always wanted. Why in the world do you act so?"

 

"She's my _sister_!" Her poor son looked so outraged at the idea she had to laugh, stand, and drag him down so she could plant a motherly kiss on his forehead. "Mother, please…"

 

"Does she say she's unhappy to find herself carrying?"

 

"She wrote, _'Robb, I could not be better pleased, stop threatening my husband!',_ right here."

Cat grinned at the begrudging admission and her son's continued scowling. He looked like her uncle when he scowled, and he looked like her husband when he smiled. No matter what the expression on Robb's face she was reminded of those she loved.

 

"Go clean the road dust off and make yourself presentable for your guests in the Great Hall. Sansa has taken over Gwyn's duties and will be severely vexed if you do not do her credit during this first dinner with guests that she's planned." Cat laughed again at how grumpy he sounded and felt her heart lighten. "Rickon might even throw a potato at you if you upset her. They've grown quite close; he's begun to toddle behind her everywhere."

 

"And she allows it?"

 

"She's been lonely too." Cat ushered her son out of the room, letting out a deep breath and feeling a mix of happiness and slight shame.

 

She was still very worried. Both for the personal ramifications of what the Crown Prince had apparently done, and for the political reality of it. The Crown was weaker than she'd thought. Her own family sat in the center of Westeros, where they would carry the brunt of any disorder. Her father was ill and Ned wrote that her brother was ill-prepared for his own future responsibilities.

 

Underneath all of that though, sneaky and darkly joyful, was the simple fact that her husband's bastard was carrying the Red Viper's child. Now, more than anything else, she could rest assured of the fact that Lyarra was _not_ returning to Winterfell. The child would be born and raised Dornish, and even if she had a _dozen_ sons with the Stark look, Robb's position and that of his children was perfectly secure against anyone with a Dornish accent and habits.

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tywin Lannister is genuinely concerned for Lord Stark, Ned and Oberyn commiserate, Lyarra's husband teaches her how to shop, and we learn what King Robert Baratheon thinks of public statuary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the later than average post, I didn't have time to format this to post last night!

**Chapter Twenty-Two - 297 A.C.**

Ser Jorah Mormont had wondered if this moment would come in front of the Iron Throne in the grandeur of a royal feud long-settled. It did not. Instead Jorah stood in a side chamber likely used to receive complaints from mid-level merchants and less prominent guild leaders. He was met at the docks by the Master of Whispers, rather than a member of the Kingsguard. Lord Varys had greeted him with a falsely kind smile, news of the King's pleasure, and the general creeping sense one got around any large spider.

Now he waited for the King to arrive beside the macabre  _ 'treasure' _ he'd carried from an abandoned manse in Pentos. Looking down beside him, he reflected that the sense of the dramatic owned by all the court would do him no good and give him no pleasure. Thinking on that left Jorah with a foul taste in his mouth. To flush it, he turned towards the man-sized crate beside him and used a short metal rod to pry the rough pine lid off. Exertion helped drive unpleasant thoughts from the mind.

Jorah scowled when the lid came off entirely. He'd packed his burden in sheep's wool, but it looked like that had not been enough. One of the figure's arms had broken off just above the elbow and now lay at an odd angle on its belly.

"Well?" A deep, impatient voice pulled itself out of Jorah's memory on the other side of the door. "You say that the dragonspawn's dead?"

"So our guest says, Your Grace." The Spider responded.

Then the door opened and Jorah had to work to keep the surprise from his face. Robert Baratheon, King of the Iron Throne, was not the man he'd been during the Greyjoy Rebellion. He'd grown fat, sweating through his silks, as hungry, bloodshot blue eyes first flicked over Jorah in muted outrage and then turned down towards the crate with a hiss.

"Proof of Viserys Targaryen's death, Your Grace." Jorah bowed and stepped back as the King stepped forward eagerly.

"So the Beggar King was struck down by the Gods themselves." Robert Baratheon's glee and satisfaction was clear.

Jorah personally could not feel anything but creeping dread in looking at the stone body of the man he'd transported from Pentos. He'd never been happier for the Martell inoculation mark on his shoulder than in traveling through Pentos. Hit hard and fast by the Plague, the city had lost well more than half of its population. Even after the Dornish had so surprisingly been willing to near-beggar themselves to ship diseased goats across the Narrow Sea, there had still been chaos and fear from looting in some areas.

Not that the Martells were suffering from their largesse. From what he’d heard Essos had doubled or tripled the investment and erased the debt out of gratitude. What favors Braavos and its bank were willing to grant were another matter entirely, and thought of them left Jorah with a sour taste in his mouth. He’d long ago learned not to count on the kindhearted nature of bankers, but they took debts of all kinds seriously. House Martell had not made an unwise choice.

Jorah had found that Illyrio Mopatis' manse had been one such looted and broken area in Pentos. He'd come out of it not just with the stone effigy that was all the plague had left of the Mad King's surviving son, but also the contents of the dead Magister's strong room, and his wine cellar. The latter was already sold to add to his coffers. Like the Martells, Jorah had decided that some risk might later bring him great reward, and so he'd brought his findings to King's Landing in the hopes that the King's pleasure would keep Eddard Stark's family blade off his neck.

"By all appearances, King Robert, the man suffered."

Tywin Lannister, Lord of the Rock, was standing at the man's shoulder. Though his face was surprisingly thin and worn compared to the last time that Jorah had seen him, the Old Lion's hazel-green eyes were unmistakably pleased with the stone body. Jorah frankly wondered how anyone could be  _ pleased _ to see it.

Viserys Targaryen had died in obvious agony. The arm that hadn't broken was twisted in front of him, his fingers in pain-wracked claws that had carved divots into the rough gray stone of his collarbone. His face was a rictus of demented affliction. His teeth, stone smooth, were bared and his tongue at an unnatural angle. He'd likely tried to keep moving it until it had finally frozen in place; too stony to move. His eyes were wide, staring and grainy, beneath the bare cap of his stone skull. A few strands of pale, nearly white, silver-gold hair still clung to his scalp. Filthy clothes, nibbled into tatters by rats and stained by his death throws, were wrapped around his body.

"It's no statue, Your Grace." A Maester with great loops of chain around his chest and a long white beard, yellowed around his mouth, commented eagerly. "Look at the arm that was broken. You can see where the stone of the body changes consistency with flesh and muscle. The bones are also evident; they're like chalk."

"Damned interesting to find you know so much of what a plague-stricken body looks like, Grand Maester, when it took a direct order from your king to even get you  _ treating _ the sick." King Robert snorted, then his lips pulled back in a snarl. "I'd recognize dragonspawn anywhere. This is the creature I wanted dead. I can see his wretched brother in his face."

The King's fist rose and Jorah thought he might break his fist on the body's face, smashing it to pieces in his rage against the Targaryens. Instead he paused, flattened his hand out again, and shook his head. Jorah watched silently. He'd wait to speak until after the King's hatred had spoken its piece.

"I'd like to dash it to dust." King Robert growled. "I won't, though.  _ I won't. _ Let the smallfolk and the others see that the Gods have abandoned the bedamned dragons."

Jorah had learned in his time in Essos to listen to the whispers and pulse of a city as he passed through it. Riding from the docks to the Red Keep had shown that there was little affection for the Crown. House Martell had men in the city, a group Jorah was going to work damned hard to avoid considering the family's history with the men standing before him. The smallfolk all talked of the Dornish as though the sun shone out of their collective asses, and tales were spreading how they had to have something to do with a recent influx of food that had made its way to the strapped markets of King's Landing. Mixed in with that talk, moreover, were fond tales of Prince Rhaegar and reminiscence about the days before Aerys went mad, when the roads were clear, brigands dealt with severely, and all things good in the hazy fondness of memory.

"Indeed?" Grand Maester Pycelle sounded slightly unnerved by this, and then bowed. "Your Grace, do you think that's  _ proper _ ? Many in the city lost their kin to this disease. You wouldn't want to start a panic."

"Everyone knows you can't catch the plague from a stone body once it's ceased to breathe." The King scoffed harshly, shooting a glare at the older man. "Use your fucking head. The Martells might not have been half so quick to get us the inoculation as they were the damned rose lords, but I'm no fool. I've had the sick goats breeding since and not a child is born in this city that doesn't get its inoculation when it has seen six moons of life. The Greyplague can do us no harm and the city knows it. We'll put the body out for all to see, and that's final!"

"A reminder that there is but one royal family would not be amiss." Lord Tywin agreed, with the same almost bland threat in his voice and power in his manner that he'd had as a younger, healthier man. Then, the cold amber-touched eyes turned to him. "Ser Jorah, what news have you of Daenerys Targaryen?"

"I've heard three tales." Jorah spoke simply. "None that I could verify."

"And?" The King demanded, scowling. "Why couldn't you get the truth of it?"

"One tale says she headed to Lys, and I cannot return to that city." Jorah stated bluntly. "Another tells of her dying before her brother, but him having had the body burned."

"How can you burn stone?"

"Just as the bodies crack easily, Your Grace, they also burn." The Grand Maester spoke into the gap, answering the question. "As limestone is a porous stone that can be burnt as a component for mortar, other stones can be burnt too if the heat is sufficient. Look at Harrenhal."

That was the wrong thing to mention, Jorah noted, as the King whirled on the Maester, sending the old man stumbling back.

"Do not speak to me of  _ Harrenhal _ over the body of the dragonspawn before me! Brother to the animal that stole my betrothed from me and raped her while her own father cooked in his armor!"

"I-I meant no offense, Your Grace, merely to speak of the damage wrought by the Targaryen's beasts."

Waving aside the old man's stammer, the King turned back to Jorah.

"What else? That's two tales. What's the third?"

"The third says that a Dothraki Khal who'd been promised her hand in marriage rode through the city amidst the Plague and swept the girl away to the Grass Sea." Jorah explained. "I think that the least likely tale. I was in the Dothraki Sea with a group of sellswords when the Plague broke out. I cannot say precisely where it began, but it appears that floods along the Selhoru River may have started it. A slave raid by a Khalasar brought the disease into contact with Pentos, when those slaves were brought into the city to be sold, and then back amongst the Dothraki themselves."

The King was listening closely and Jorah continued.

"The Dothraki have their own healers, but they're unskilled compared to those in the Free Cities or Maesters here in Westeros. When a Plague of any kind breaks out, the horse lords and their people scatter to prevent the spread. They also expel all foreigners, myself included. Riding into a plague infected city just to fetch a foreign bride would be entirely contrary to how the Dothraki deal with such things."

"Varys," The King barked after a moment of nodding, "You'll follow this rumor anyway. Make sure the last of the dragonspawn is dead. Find me a stone body or chalk ashes; I care not which, but give me proof."

The eunuch bowed and scraped, agreeing to do so in what Jorah assumed was his usual obsequious manner. Then the King turned to him. His expression was a strange mix of stern disgust and something Jorah couldn't place.

"You aren't the same man you were when you went over the wall at Pyke."

"No, Your Grace." He met the man's bloodshot blue eyes. "I am not."

"Ned would have your head, and I can't argue with him wanting it.  _ Slavery _ ." The King's mouth twisted and Jorah began to feel a cold fear settle in his belly. "We're real men here. This is Westeros, and you were of the North. They've never kept slaves or thralls there, have they?"

"No, they haven't."

"What've  _ you _ got to say about it?"

"I made a poor choice in my wife, and I paid for it." Jorah replied bluntly, wanting to grind his jaw and refuse to answer, but knowing he should not. He'd sold his pride and honor for less, once. Lynesse's love was too expensive for his honor to serve as effective collateral.

"Haven't we all?" The King's answer was spat and Jorah flickered his eyes to where the Old Lion's face was as immobile as that of the dead prince laying in its padded box.

"Still… I can understand." Robert Baratheon spoke again, and suddenly Jorah realized what had been in his tone that he couldn't identify before.

_ Sympathy _ .

"I promised a lordship for this." King Robert went on, and grinned crookedly. "I don't suppose that's any use without your head."

"Not much." Jorah felt himself smiling back, just slightly and the King let out a short bark of laughter before his face turned harsher.

"I won't speak for Ned or the North, but I doubt he'll be as forgiving as I am. The man's honor won't allow it." Respect filled the King's tone as he spoke. "South of the Neck, however, you're a free man. What about Lord of Stokeworth, eh? It's close enough to the capital and fertile ground. I've had a steward there since the Plague wiped out that House, but it'd run better with a real man there. I need the road clear of brigands and food coming from House Stokeworth to keep the capital fed. Do you think you can do that, Lord Jorah Mormont of Stokeworth?"

"My family wouldn't have me on Bear Isle, Your Grace." Jorah answered, then swallowed. It felt like a dream, his limbs were heavy and his head light. The bitter taste of knowing that Ned Stark's hand wouldn't be forced to allow him home was almost weak in comparison to the knowledge that he was a vagrant no longer. "Brigands I can handle, and your generosity is a great honor."

"I'll have the Lord Hand draw up the papers." The King delivered a punishing slap to his shoulder. "You'll be a lord by sunset."

Jorah was left with a servant to be taken to his quarters. As he turned a corner, he heard voices from the other direction. Recognizing the Warden of the North's voice along with Jon Arryn's as they walked towards where King Robert was discussing with his goodfather the best placement of the Beggar King's body, Jorah opted to walk faster. He'd face Ned Stark when the time came, but he'd do it as a Crownlands Lord with the King's pardon.

* * *

 

 

Ned Stark knelt in front of the Heart Tree. It didn't feel right that the tree was an oak, rather than a weirwood, or that it was called a Heart Tree when its face had long since grown into no more than a suggestion without magic behind it. Covered in ivy, the small wood in the Red Keep's gardens held none of the hushed sanctity that Ned relied on for peace of mind in his own home when his ghost came to haunt him.

"I had thought to find you here."

Ned rose at the sound of a now-familiar voice and its usual drawling accent.

" _ Lyarra _ -."

"Is perfectly well, as long as she does not tax herself, eats regularly, and does not rise suddenly or spin around." The Red Viper's expression suggested that his words offered him little comfort.

"I had thought you said that your daughters treated their mothers  _ well _ in the womb?"

"Always before, yes, but Lyarra's symptoms are not so comparatively harsh, and I have now been told by no less than fifteen  _ knowledgeable matrons _ who stopped me on the way here that one cannot judge any one lady's womb by another's."

Ned fell silent and waited. He was relieved, for once, that the man liked the sound of his own voice. He'd found it made waiting the Viper out rather easy for a man known for his own reserve.

"I am not sending your daughters to Sunspear. Nor am I sending away the rest of the ladies of the party. You may stop staring at me so." The Prince answered the unspoken question, his tone acidic. Ned huffed out a breath and ran his hand through his hair, coming over to lean against the tall cedar that the man was standing under, his expression harsh and discontented.

"I do not know that I am relieved to keep them with me longer, or unhappy with that answer." Ned admitted. "This place is still a pit of rats. They gnaw at each other constantly, and roll in their own filth. I would sooner my daughters be in a pit of vipers, in truth."

"Was that a compliment, Lord Stark?"

"Maybe some small part of one."

"I'll take it." The Prince scoffed and Ned snorted. "If I'd known you were going to the yard to practice, I would have joined you."

Ned was still in his boiled leathers rather than his court attire. His hair was matted with sweat and he knew he reeked of the exertion. As it was, he'd owe Jory a drink for having dealt him an unlooked for blow to the gut during their bout. His temper had been foul enough that he'd failed to check the blow properly.

"I'd have appreciated it." Ned admitted.

He'd seen the man fight and the bloody challenge of it, and the fact that he knew neither would have held back nor cared that the other did, would have been more satisfying than watching his own men deal with his foul temper. As it was, he was just grateful that young Ser Domeric had gone out riding with a group of young knights. He had  _ no _ desire to explain to Lord Bolton how his least favored bannerman's only living child had ended up a bruised mess because of Ned's temper.

"As would I." Prince Oberyn said tartly. "I trust you are in a temper for much the same reason as I."

"Likely."

Ned's morning was anger piled on top of disgust garnished with disappointment. In some way it was a relief to know that the Mad King's son was dead. The Beggar King could not become anyone's puppet against his friend now, and he need not fear that Robert would have to be responsible for an assassination. He'd spent years fretting for those two children, bloody red cloaks on his mind, and Lyarra's surprised smile breaking across his memory to the tune of Lyanna's final words. Now Viserys Targaryen was dead by no-one's hand but a disease that struck cowherd and king indiscriminately.

To  _ display _ the body, though? Somewhere in the back of his mind he could admit the logic of letting the loyalist lords see it. It was another thing altogether to have the pained and twisted thing stripped of its tattered clothing and set up on a plinth in one of King's Landing's larger squares. What good did it serve the Crown or Robert's honor to do  _ that _ ?

The loyalist lords were furious beyond words, not the least because Lord Monford Velaryon's words about common decency demanding that they treat all bodies with respect, had hidden such obvious rage. What would it have cost Robert to let the man burn the body and inter it at Dragonstone or even Velayron's own keep after calling the lords present in Court to view it in the Great Hall?  _ Nothing _ .

It had devolved into an argument later. Robert had wanted to drink and break bread in private with Ned after his triumph in seeing the body installed in its new 'home'. They'd quarreled over the respect bodies should be given, Robert fell back in calling the boy dragonspawn, and then rubbed Ned's face in Lyanna's death.

_ "And Rhaegar ... how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times? I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves…" _

Ned had countered, arguing that if he was to punish rapists as they deserved then the Mountain should at least pay for his crimes against the Princess Elia. Even if he offered no contest to what had been done to the woman's babes, she was no more guilty of her place as a hostage of the Mad King and his eldest son than Lyanna was. What choice had she been offered in her marriage when the King demanded it?

Robert's rages, his blind hatred of all who held Targaryen blood left a foul taste in Ned's mouth. What's worse, they left him  _ frightened _ . He could not picture those crushed bodies, hidden in Lannister red wool, and not think of Lyarra as a babe. Tiny and fragile she'd been, born more than a moon early. It was a miracle she'd lived at all, and thinking of what Robert would  _ do _ …

_ "Then you need not wonder why the Red Viper even now readies a ship to send his princess away to Dorne at this instant, when House Martell's children are not even safe in memory and his wife is with child." _

Ned wished he could pull the words back into his mouth as soon as he said them. Their argument deteriorated further as Robert looked as if he'd been struck. The King's first instinct was to declare he would forbid it, and Ned had been left shocked at his response.

_ "Robert, you would take my daughter hostage from her Marked husband? Why?" _

Whatever had been on his face or in his voice seemed to have shaken the unreasonable rage's grip loose. Robert had stared at him for a moment, then blustered that his intention was nothing of the sort. He'd also gone on about having no ill-intentions where any honorable lady was concerned. Something Ned knew was not  _ precisely _ true, as his friend showed little discrimination in his choice of bedmates, but he acquitted him of active malice. The Lady Lyarra was Marked and wed, of course; he merely didn't trust the damned Dornish to treat her as she deserved. He also feared to see a gift like Lyarra, so like her aunt, sent to the same place where Lyanna died.

Ned had been forced to agree with that. He'd been grieved as well. He shared his fear that it was his own complicity in letting the Mountain and Amory Lorch walk free that had angered the Gods enough to give his daughter to the Viper as a soulmate. Robert had looked stricken, but instead of weakening on the oath he'd drawn from Ned so unwillingly all those years ago, the conversation had changed direction again.

Talk had drifted down a path that had shaken Ned's own initial rage loose in compassion. Robert had spoken of the Princess Myrcella and the Prince Tommen. His grief coming too late as he realized how precious the little ones had been; his kind, gentle, youngest son and his laughing, beautiful, golden daughter. Now he was left with only Joffrey.

_ "It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown ... it was the girl I fought them for. Your sister, safe… and mine again, as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The Gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike." _ His best friend, brother in all but name, had lamented.  _ "Ned, I'd give this wretched crown and that cursed seat up in a second. I dream of Essos and the song of swords; better a sellsword than this. How can I, though? With Joffrey standing in my shadow and Cersei waiting to whisper poison in the boy's ears…" _

So Ned and Robert had fought and were reconciled in the space of a half-hour. How was that unusual? Ned was forced to think back on their boyhoods in the Vale and a thousand similar incidents, but it had left a bad taste in his mouth. This was no matter of a childhood blunder. Lives had been lost, a princess defiled, and children murdered. Ned was at war with  _ himself _ over his inability to stop forgiving his friend, and yet Robert had so many good qualities. He was generous to a fault, he usually forgave offense as quickly as he burned with anger, and according to accounts of those who'd ridden with him against the brigands, Robert remained a fine warrior if nothing like the walking-triumph he'd been in his youth.

"Have you heard that the King pardoned Jorah Mormont and made him Lord of Stokeworth?" Ned finally asked, moving over to a slightly younger oak than the Heart Tree. It had great exposed roots that made good seats.

Taking Ice from its scabbard across his back, he balanced it across his knees and began polishing it. The Viper followed him over and leaned against the tree's knotty, bulbous trunk and produced a small, triangular throwing knife from his sleeve. Ned watched it dance across the man's knuckles as the prince answered.

"I had. I take it you did not?"

"The Master of Whispers mentioned it in passing in the hallway."

"A habit of Lord Varys."

" _ Aye _ ." Ned agreed with tired disgust and scrubbed hard at an imaginary speck of dirt.

"There is talk of whether you will be forced to pardon the man and allow him to retake his family seat on Bear Island as well."

"I would rather he become a corpse. His crimes dishonored the North." Ned snarled and gave up on gaining any piece of mind, returning Ice to its place across his back and rising to begin the walk out of the Godswood and into the gardens. "Nothing's being accomplished here. You've left Lyarra alone?"

"I've left Lyarra resting with Ladies Myria, Walda, and Gwyn." The Viper frowned. "The last is currently confined to Lyarra's presence for the rest of the day because she has been venturing around the Red Keep with no guard."

"Truly?" Ned stared at the taller, leaner man. "I don't know whether I'm more alarmed or pleased. If she's feeling secure enough to creep about, then she is more herself than I feared she would be for a long time after leaving Winterfell."

The Viper looked back, clearly vexed by his words.

"Whatever the priggish beyond the Red Mountains say of me, in my home and most of Essos, I am known for  _ saving _ beautiful maidens from danger, not bringing it upon them. I am growing tired of your insistence that I am somehow a figure of terror for that child, or should be."

Ned just raised his eyebrows speakingly.

"Your son is a far more agreeable man to deal with than you, Lord Stark." The Viper narrowed his black eyes.

"He gets it from his mother." Ned stated flatly, knowing the blankness would annoy the man. Inside, he was amused that he'd vexed the man so thoroughly.

The Viper cast him a dark look at his victory and changed the subject.

"Arya told me you had hired her a  _ dancing _ master? For what purpose? The girl has the makings of a swordsman of great skill. You shouldn't waste her time so."

"If Arya is pleased with her dancing master, I don't see where you have grounds to complain that I've given my daughter a gift before our parting." Ned replied, smug at having kept a secret from the man.

Eventually he'd introduce the Viper to Syrio Forel, and he'd enjoy the smug ass' shock. The man had been the First Sword of Braavos, and he'd heard of the Red Viper as well. Forel had found the idea of surprising the infamous prince amusing, and so Ned had been able to put off introductions. Luckily Arya was quite pleased to be involved in some mischief with her usually serious father. Ned had written Benjen of it, and looked forward to his response. It was the kind of foolery that Lyanna would have loved, and Benjen would appreciate that his brother had chosen that as his gift to Arya more than the mere sword lessons.

 

* * *

 

 

Lord Tywin Lannister leaned on his walking stick and listened. He'd come to the gardens to walk the gentle paths and avail himself of its many benches in privacy. His frustration over the incurable and wretched weakness that had overtaken him since the plague wracked his body, only to recede leaving exhaustion behind, demanded it.

_ Gentle exercise. _ Just the phrased mocked him. What could he do, however? He hardly intended to rest on his laurels when so much was amiss and everything he'd worked a lifetime to build was in such jeopardy. Twyin's health demanded a slow climb back to what he'd once been, so he would go slowly, and he would endure. If that meant walks about the gardens of the Red Keep like some bored lady, so be it.

_ "Your son is a far more agreeable man to deal with than you, Lord Stark." _

_ "He gets it from his mother." _

Hearing that exchange between the mad second son of House Martell and the Warden of the North from behind a row of hedges sent his aches to the back of Tywin's mind. Where another might have heard two men who only reluctantly found each other tolerant company japing with sharpened wits, Tywin heard something else entirely. Who could blame him, with what was on his mind?

Whatever the Lord of Winterfell might foolishly believe about marriage alliances being a street wide enough for two carts to move without conflict, Tywin was not blinded by any high and vague concept of honor. He knew the weaknesses of men and he knew the value of power. Nor did he entertain any foolishness as to what the Dornish were capable of. They'd long been cowards and raiders, who lived licentious lives without control and indulged themselves hedonistically.

Ned Stark might be blind enough to believe that his own ties with the throne would restrain House Martell, but Tywin did not. No man was so fond of his wife as to forget such slights as the Martells held close to their hearts. Moreover, it was obvious to Tywin that the man enjoyed tormenting the King with the fact that Lyarra Stark was her aunt reborn far more than he truly cared for the girl. Had he any respect for her, he wouldn't put the bastard up in front of everyone where she might be mocked before the court; not that this was happening overmuch yet. For now the girl's beauty and the King's favor was keeping the wagging tongues at bay to some extent. They were making much of the King’s lusting for the girl, but her Mark protected her from any assumption of wrongdoing on her own part.

Nor was the loyalty of bastards to be relied upon. Who better to attest to that than one who'd fought in the last Blackfyre war? Tywin had seen firsthand how  _ little _ kin meant to the bloody offspring of sin.

If the Red Viper favored Robb Stark over his father, then it was  _ imperative _ that Ned Stark be kept safe. Tywin knew little of the Young Wolf, though the information he'd gathered spoke well of the young man. He was considered a capable, rising young warrior. His skill with a blade was praised, and lately word came that he'd rode through most of the North's Houses and the bannermen were pleased with what they saw. A few Heirs his own age had joined him in Winterfell even, amending whatever damage that Lord Eddard's foolish lack of fosterlings had started.

_ No _ , Tywin couldn't take a chance that Ned Stark's son was truer to Hoster Tully's blood than his father's. He knew the position his own House was in and seethed to see the Crown he'd invested in so weak. Joffrey's recent  _ display _ had only made it worse. That  _ his _ blood should be compared to the  _ Mad King _ only made it that much more infuriating. Tywin blamed it on whatever corruption the Targaryens and their wretched incestuous soup of a bloodline had done to the Stormlords. If Robert Baratheon's excesses were some small fragment of madness, it had lodged in Joffrey somewhere and grown fetid.

Now, as always, it was  _ his _ job to clean up the mess.

"Lord Eddard."

The Red Viper had already strode away, claiming other matters to attend to. Tywin was left to round the bend that merged his path with the wolf lord's and speak to him. Seeing how much he'd been outpaced was annoying, but the Warden of the North was too polite to walk further away or feign having failed to hear him. Instead Lord Stark paused, turned, and offered the older man a brief, respectful, incline of his head.

"Lord Tywin."

"If you've time, walk with me."

"Of course." The younger man answered stiffly, but his manners got the best of him and he gauged and measured his walk to equal Tywin's slower pace.

Such courtesy was irksome, but Tywin wasn't one to refuse a disadvantage. If this gave him some time to speak to the Warden of the North, he’d take it. He was in no position to refuse any headway that could be made,  _ frustrating _ as that reality was.

"I must offer you congratulations on your daughter's being blessed. A first grandchild is a thing to treasure." He observed, then added, " _ Usually _ ."

Stark cut his eyes towards him, his look transparent. Ned Stark's looks normally were. He usually only managed two expressions: transparent or utterly opaque. Hints of awkwardness, displeasure, or other emotions crept onto his face in only the smallest measure. Northern stoicism was to be admired, but it required careful observation.

"The Prince Joffrey is to go to the Westerlands with you after the Tourney, or so the King told me."

"I look forward to it." Tywin lied

He would see if he could shape the boy into something that wouldn't shame the family. If not, hopefully Cersei would have conceived and birthed another son. Tywin was no kinslayer, but he wouldn't tolerate another uncontrollable and mad king, either.  _ Never _ again. The boy could be put aside under guard, sent to take the Black, or put in a position without protection where his vices would lead to his own death. Then Tywin could work in haste to train Joffrey's replacement.

He could not, Tywin reflected grimly, overlook the potential reality that his daughter was now barren. There had been no conceptions after Tommen. There'd been a worryingly large gap between Joffrey and Myrcella and no miscarriages in between to explain the six years without pregnancy.

Tywin could lay some of this blame solely at Cersei's feet. He did not blame her for not wanting the oaf in her bed who disgraced himself and Tywin's daughter with his whoring. He did blame her for not having the intelligence to recognize that securing the throne was more important than her hurt pride.

He'd consulted with Pycelle. Tywin had always heard that a woman's womb, if left long unseeded, could become barren more readily than a woman with failed pregnancies. Lady Lysa Tully, foolish chit that she'd turned out to be, was a good example. The moon tea may have damaged her womb, but repeated conceptions kept it open to receive Lord Arryn's seed well enough that she'd finally managed a living son before the Plague had taken the boy.

He knew that Cersei had discouraged the King. Despite that, the Stag had been bedding her regularly for the last year and a half. That there was no sign of a pregnancy in that time was worrying. If Cersei's womb had grown barren, then there was nothing for it. Tywin had to see Joffrey wed and a child come from that as soon as possible.  _ Legally _ , that meant the boy could wed and bed his wife when Joffrey was three-and-ten. A maiden could be wed at her first moon's blood.

"Family is the greatest reassurance in my life." Ned Stark's offered agreement was thin and careful, and Tywin had to admire that a blunt Northerner implied so well, so many things with a few words. The man's honor made him do stupid things, but it didn't make the man himself without wits.

"I have been remiss in not taking Joffrey into my care sooner. His father's duties and his mother's grief over losing her younger children have left the Crown Prince under the guidance of unworthy men. In Casterly Rock, this will not be the case."

Tywin had every intention of seeing if he could improve the boy. Cersei's coddling would end. He would make sure that the prince got some taste of real effort in the training yard, and he would make the child apply himself to lessons under a proper Maester. Their family's situation demanded that he try and salvage what he could. He had to at least make Joffrey control himself enough to do his most essential duty.

"Joffrey is too alone in the Red Keep. Hired swords who do naught but the boy's bidding are not fit company for a prince." Tywin went on. "My House has a great deal of experience and many foster children in our care at the Rock. My brother, Ser Kevan, is much looked to for the next generation of the Westerland's knights. My sister is in charge of fourteen young girls from good Houses, and much esteemed for shaping young ladies into brides a family can be proud of."

"I'm familiar with how fosterlings are treated at Casterly Rock." Ned Stark surprised him by answering directly in a moderate voice, turning his gray eyes to look directly at Tywin. "There is a lady now highly placed in the Princess Lyarra's household who spent two years of her childhood fostered with your sister, the Lady Genna."

"Really?"

That was a surprise to Tywin, though it pleased him on one level. Genna was well-regarded by most of the South when it came to guiding young ladies and preparing them for marriage. Tywin himself had never been able to find the slightest fault with the care and training of anyone in his sister's care. The ladies learned the finer arts of sewing and music along with being rigorously trained in courtesy, the mathematics of household management, and the art of presentation. Knowing Lord Stark had seen this first hand gave him what he felt was a strong foothold in convincing him that Casterly Rock itself would be a safe place for any child of Lord Stark's.

Joffrey himself was almost a trivial part of any marriage worked out. He could be kept away from the girl when not conceiving a future king. Other than that Tywin would be more than willing to put the girl in the lap of luxury if it assured him of the North's loyalty. A  _ trueborn _ daughter, after all, was more valuable than any bastard. Lord Hoster's loyalty would follow his own bloodline as well.

" _ Indeed _ ." Lord Stark agreed.

"May I inquire as to the girl's name?"

"The Lady Gwyn, of House Parren. Daughter of the late Ser Galen Parren of the Lannisport Guard."

_ That _ name at least was familiar and also pleasing to him. Ser Galen Parren was not a first son and neither was his own father, but the man had been extremely competent and fought fiercely during the Greyjoy Rebellion. He'd been only a handful of survivors in the Guard when Lannisport was sacked, and it was his quick thinking that had secured the vaults at the Iron Bank's offices. Had Galen Parren not done that then Tywin would have had to replace the funds lost as he assured the Iron Bank's safety personally.

Had the knight not died when he did Tywin knew Kevan had planned to move him up to a position at the Rock itself. Tywin also knew that he could claim some small blood tie with the girl as well. He knew nothing of Ser Galen Parren's offspring, but he did know the man had married into the Lannisters of Lannisport.

"I remember Ser Galen, though not his family." Tywin acknowledged and then voiced the one issue with what Stark had told him. "However, I do worry. If the Lady's mother was a Lannisport Lannister then she's carrying blood into Dorne that might put her in a dangerous position. The Red Viper is watched here, but in his  _ homeland _ ? One can only imagine he will feel much freer."

"On the contrary." Ned Stark now looked him full in the face, his voice heavy with some inference Tywin was infuriated to realize he had no notion of. "I think if you were to consider the matter, then you would realize how very much the Prince Oberyn and the Lady Gwyn have in common. I am sure he's fond of her, and that they'll have much to discuss in her time serving my daughter."

"Father!"

Tywin made his excuses when he saw the uncouth youngest daughter of the man pelting wildly towards the Warden of the North. She was grinning and, of all the ridiculous things, she held a wooden practice sword in her hand. Moreover, she had one of the family's beasts with her. Obviously no-one had told Stark that wolves of all kinds were for hunting, not family pets. When one of his children got mauled, Tywin supposed he would learn.

 

* * *

 

 

"Oberyn, what is this?" Lyarra asked in a mix of delighted surprise and slight disturbance.

"This is Madame Trynna, wife of a fine cloth merchant." Her husband grinned and took the plump middle-aged woman's hand with a flourish, leading her forward to make her curtsey. "This is also how a  _ princess _ shops."

Lyarra was comfortably draped over the settee, an extra two pillows stuffed behind her back by an insistent Gwyn. At her elbow was a small table and on it was a glass of clear pink liquid. It also featured a polished wooden bowl made by her own hand that was piled high with fresh fruit. Beside that was a smaller bowl filled with nuts.

Lyarra was incredibly embarrassed and ashamed that she'd violated her husband's trust by speaking of her pregnancy. She hadn't  _ meant _ to let the court know, and now everyone most certainly knew, but what could she do? She hadn't expected to go so light-headed she hadn't known which direction was up. She didn't know what was worse about the swooning; losing control of herself temporarily or the frustrating reality that she was totally fine within a few moments of doing it.

She'd been relieved, at least, that the consultation of a Maester Oberyn was willing to trust confirmed that there was nothing amiss with her or her babe. Some women just grew lightheaded if they moved too quickly during various times while they carried a child. Lyarra appeared to be one of them. At least keeping a little food in her stomach at all times seemed to keep her from vomiting or being leveled by insistent nausea.

"Or, in this case, how a lady in a household of the Princess of Dorne shops while resting in King's Landing." He added wryly, and grinned at Lyarra playfully. "I took the initiative, my dear, of arranging for part of your Dornish wardrobe myself when we arrived. Those gowns are already done."

A couple of young servant girls came forward bearing a new chest made of gleaming, but uncarved, pale wood and a simple locking mechanism. Lyarra felt a moment's chagrin. Then she looked at her husband.

"First, my Prince, you say  _ you _ ordered the gowns?"

"I did." He looked too pleased with himself to be good.

"And, so  _ you _ dictated their style."

"In the Dornish fashion, yes. Who better than I to make sure you are properly dressed for Sunspear?"

Lyarra turned to look at Lady Myria. Unlike Lady Jynessa, who had taken the day for herself, the voluptuous woman had remained to keep them company. It had been a time of more instruction on how to deal with Queen Cersei and the court, but also just a pleasurable time. They sat around and talked, Gwyn played her guitar for them and Lyarra sang a few songs.

"Prince Oberyn has many faults, but he also has a wonderful aesthetic sense and grasp of fashion, Princess." Lady Myria laughed. "He will not steer you wrong."

Lyarra relaxed slightly and took in the smugness on her husband's face as he accepted the compliment with obvious pleasure.

"Second question, husband." Lyarra held up a hand. "If you've already seen to part of my Dornish wardrobe, why do I need a visit from a fine cloth merchant?"

Madame Trynna was beginning to look fearful for her profits. She glanced back at the door nervously. Then she looked at Oberyn beseechingly. If anything, Lyarra's husband grew smugger. Reaching behind his back he produced, as if by magic, two fat leather purses. They jingled giddily with coin.

"The ladies of your household will have to be properly attired for court in Sunspear." He went on. "With that in mind, I have gone over the Lady Gwyn's dowry. It is held in the Iron bank, but I now have control of the account as her guardian. She has been most frugal, and I applaud her for it. This is the sum of the last six moons that went unspent of the allowance that Lord Stark allowed her. I have augmented it by a quarter."

Gwyn looked quite shocked.

"You're giving it to me all at once?"

"Yes, unless you would rather I return it. However, you will need appropriate clothing and mine wife is only expected to provide a portion of your clothing budget per year. This will not establish the wardrobe you will need to begin with."

"No, I - no,  _ thank you _ ." Gwyn replied, then paused and added. "Lady Genna and Lady Stark only allotted me money per dress, when they felt I had need of it."

"It is your money." Oberyn shrugged and raised an eyebrow. "As long as you continue to manage your books wisely, there is no reason for anyone to question what you do with it."

Gwyn looked as though she'd never received a better compliment as she caught the leather purse thrown to her, offering Oberyn her thanks as she beamed at him. Lyarra felt something clench as she looked at her friend. Seldom did she really see Gwyn looking her own age. Even when she was in the midst of her mischief, she looked a little too calculating to be only three-and-ten, and the control and caution she exerted so often went without saying.

"Now, Lady Walda."

Walda, who had tucked her head down to look away, as if afraid to call attention to herself, looked up.

"Yes, Your Grace?"

Oberyn grinned and tossed her the purse. Walda caught it readily in a steady hand. Her blue-gray eyes widened to the size of saucers. She looked down at the money in her hands, then looked up.

"I - Prince Oberyn,  _ thank you _ , but you and Lyarra have already given me  _ so much _ -."

"That is not a  _ gift _ , my dear." Oberyn walked over to where Lyarra had sat up on the settee and sprawled behind her, reaching past her back to hook a cluster of grapes and begin popping them into his mouth one by one. "It is part of the money your uncle, Lord Stevron, generously endowed you with upon joining the Princess' household. It is approximately one-third of what I pointed out was a reasonable amount for your trousseau, and I am sorry to reduce it, but you're yet young for marriage. Interest will build up on the full amount, as it will on the rest of your dowry, and if you are frugal with your allowance, the gold will replace itself."

" _ M-my dowry _ ?" Walda barely breathed. "B-but I  _ disgraced _ House Frey. I-I hit my own  _ kin _ with a hot pan, and-."

"And prevented a lady under mine protection from suffering some hurt." Lyarra felt her heart clench as Oberyn nodded towards Gwyn. "On that note, you will find my gratitude supplemented your funds just a bit more than the Lady Gwyn's."

Walda's eyes began to fill with tears and Lyarra reached for her hands with her own and squeezed them, as Walda was sitting nearest to her. Gwyn had taken the sofa so that she had room to play her guitar. Now the guitar sat next to her while Gwyn happily counted the coins in her purse.

"Lord Stevron agreed to my strong suggestion that, as the granddaughter of a powerful lord, you were entitled to a dowry." Oberyn explained with a surprisingly gentle smile. "As you are far from the line of succession, he also agreed to equal the principle that originally made up Lady Gwyn's dowry. It is not an exceptional sum, but it is appropriate. It is also enough that many a wealthy merchant, landed knight, or minor lord would be happy to wed the lady who holds it."

Oberyn dropped the grape stem and rose to his feet to accept the embrace that Walda wildly threw herself into. As she cried into his tunic, her voice got a little painful. Lyarra grinned over the squeaking and felt something in her chest just…  _ overflow _ . Ghost, who'd been napping sedately in the corner, came up and rested her head in Lyarra's lap. Lyarra embraced the direwolf as she watched her husband happily pat Walda on the back and then pass her off to Gwyn with one of his handkerchiefs.

"Now, dry your eyes, Lady Walda. You've work to do." He said firmly. "You and Lady Gwyn will have quite a lot of sewing to do before we arrive at Sunspear, so the faster you choose your fabrics and embroidery thread, the faster you may get started."

Madame Trynna was watching the proceedings with a broad grin. Lyarra found herself unable to restrain her own happiness and gestured to the woman to step forward. As Oberyn resettled himself on the settee with her, Lyarra passed him her own handkerchief so he could blot at the large tear stain he'd been left with.

"Thank you for inconveniencing yourself with the trip up to the castle, Madame." Lyarra had not been raised to be rude to anyone.

"Yes, carrying wares through the city can be a hassle." Gwyn agreed, having put her guitar back in its case and set it aside so Walda could sit next to her. "My grandfather dealt wool in Lannisport and he always complained about trying to keep the salt from the sea out of anything he took up to the Rock."

Lady Trynna seemed shocked that a girl with a merchant grandfather was part of a princess' household, but Lyarra reassured her that Gwyn had been fostered by Lady Stark herself and it was in no way odd. She wasn't quite sure at the look she got at that point, but Lyarra was utterly distracted as series of maids entered the room with their arms heaped with bolts of thin, fine linen, cotton, and silks ranging from rich and dark to translucent.

As such she didn't notice the rapidly growing expression of approbation on the merchant's wife's face as she took in Lyarra moving over to sit with Gwyn and Walda as they counted their money out and carefully debated how best to spend it wisely. Nor did she think much on the woman's brief, effusive praise of House Martell. If anything, Lyarra was embarrassed and responded in her usual manner by praising Prince Doran for his farsightedness and agreeing that it was wrong for the other lords not to treat their smallfolk.

"My father, Lord Eddard Stark, set the inoculations up by region. They happened at the holdfasts and castles, but the the lords got their inoculations with their folk rather than separate from them." Lyarra explained. "He also had all of the Maesters in the North charged to keep ledgers of who'd gotten their inoculations. Even now my brother's using it as the basis for the Winter Survey we're taking."

"Winter Survey, Your Grace?" The Merchant asked, having relaxed slightly.

"Aye, before each Winter, we take note of how many people are in the North, so we know how many mouths we have to feed. If it's a long winter and food has to be bought in, the Lord of Winterfell  _ cannot _ allow any misplaced greed from a single bannerman to hurt another, should someone dishonorably claim more people than they actually have. This way, if there's some discrepancy, it can be investigated before anything's allotted."

"You provide food for your people in hard times?" The woman was obviously shocked.

"It's a lord's duty to keep his people safe and well-kept to the best they are able." Lyarra answered earnestly. "I'm sorry that there are places where that is not taken as a given."

Pretending to nap upon the sofa, and with his black eyes hidden behind intermeshed eyelashes as he took in his wife and her ladies interactions with the merchant's wife, Lyarra didn't notice the tiny hint of a smug smile touching Oberyn's lips. Lyarra would later sigh when, in Sunspear, she found out that Madame Trynna's husband was one of those merchants whose tongue Prince Joffrey had ordered torn out. She would learn that, in inviting her to make a solid profit today, he'd helped her survive and raise enough money to sell their house and shop and move from King's Landing to Duskendale.

She would also learn that Lady Trynna was a notorious gossip. As she left she carried with her the tale of how Prince Doran's younger brother, fierce and vengeful as he was in battle, was gentle with his beautiful young wife. She'd tell of how he negotiated for a lady in her household to get her proper dowry from her angry kin, and that he was generous and kind enough to allow a merchant's granddaughter to serve his wife in a place of honor. They would even tell of how the Princess Lyarra's family did things  _ properly _ in the North and treated the commons with respect and dignity.

For the moment, however, Lyarra just reflected on how pleasant it was to spend a day without worrying about the King's odd behavior towards her or the Queen's cruelty. She would spare a few moments to really miss Sansa, who she knew would have been  _ overjoyed _ to spend two hours gleefully selecting fabrics and then discussing styles  _ (even alarmingly risque styles _ ) with Lady Myria. Then Lyarra lost herself to sketching out designs on a few stray stained and scraped sheets of cheaper parchent with her ladies as if she really were just a normal noble lady of fine parentage and forgot that she'd ever been ashamed to be herself at all.

 

* * *

 

 

Oberyn had bowed to his wife's insistence that she needed to move by taking her out into the gardens as the sun hung low on the horizon. Ghost padded silently along at their side as they walked slowly around the white gravel paths of the garden. He also allowed her to think that he wasn't waiting for her to ask. Like Gwyn, Lyarra was ever industrious in her own way, and by leaving her with instructions that she was to spend the day at ease, he knew he would make her restless eventually.

Eventually he took a seat upon a bench, mindful of his wife's condition. While he knew that the chances that she or their child were in any real danger were low, he couldn't help being unnerved by her lightheadedness or nausea. Ellaria had only known the slightest such symptoms, and then only with two of their girls. That Lyarra was showing them so easily was a painful reminder of Elia's suffering, and a worry given how her own mother had apparently died.

Oberyn brushed his flare of irritation that Ned Stark continued to hold his secret so close. The man would do as he chose. Were Lyarra's mother noble he might even think himself being  _ honorable _ in protecting her reputation. It was possible, after all, that in the chaos of the Usurper's revolt, that her family had hidden the pregnancy entirely and the woman's name was still  _ 'untainted' _ . Not that, given the woman was likely Dornish, any of her own countrymen would have seen her so.

"Oberyn." Lyarra chided him weakly, but allowed him to pull her down into his lap as he sat on the bench.

"Yes, darling?"

"The bench is wide enough for at least three people, you realize."

"As intriguing as the possibilities available are, I do not believe our Marks will allow us to explore them." Oberyn sighed and got a pair of grey eyes rolled at him for his trouble. Then she swatted his shoulder. "However, should you ever want to press upon the Gods' shackles, I am entirely willing to-."

Grinning he refused to let her up, settling herself more firmly in his lap instead and groaning a little when the curve of her ass pressed particularly pleasantly upon his manhood. He wasn't hard, but if she kept squirming, he would be soon. Not that he  _ objected _ … he just didn't believe he could tempt her into much more than some kissing and discrete caressing on the bench. Abandoned as the gardens seemed, she would surely see it as  _ 'public' _ .

That didn't stop him from curling his arms around her and running his hand up her back. She was wearing a linen dress in a pale shade of lavender, and while he didn't appreciate the modest neckline, he had to admit that he liked that the sleeves were split from the shoulders down. Running his hands up the full length of her bare arms made her shiver. He couldn't wait to get her into some of the newly completed Dornish gowns. If not for the access, then for the look on her face when presented with the dresses.

He was further delighted when she leaned in for a kiss on her own. Her lips brushed his softly, but it took very little encouragement until her tongue was tangling with his own. Her hands ended up quickly in his hair, and he took full advantage to pull her against him. He overstepped by lifting his hands to the lacing at the back of her gown, though, and she pulled back with a huff.

"Really?"

" _ Always _ ." Oberyn grinned and shifted beneath her to show her precisely how she affected him, then sighed as he leaned in and stole another, briefer kiss. "You know not your power, Lyarra, and it is strangely intoxicating. How few women of your beauty would walk through a room unaware of the effect you have on every man present? Well, discounting those with such exclusive tastes as Ser Loras or Lord Renly."

"I'm not unaware." Lyarra huffed, blushing brightly across her cheekbones and pulling back a little. "I'm  _ uncomfortable _ . It wasn't so long ago they were calling me horse-faced as they do Arya."

"Some beauty must be grown into." Oberyn chuckled. "I used to get into fights over my nose as a lad. It stopped around the time I was two-and-ten."

"You grew into your nose, then?"

"Not until another year or so had passed. But by the time I was two-and-ten, few wanted to deal with my temper or my spear should they aggravate the former."

"Who were the few who would?"

"My brother, Doran." Oberyn grinned, happy to share the memory. "People forget, now, but Doran was once much-feared on the lists. His son Quentyn is the same way; people take in his mild habits and steady personality and utterly ignore the fact that he's been trained in arms his entire life. I put a wooden spear into his hands myself before he could walk. Doran was vexed at me for beating him to it. The first time I bested my brother in a spar I ran all around Sunspear to inform everyone of my triumph."

Lyarra was grinning sadly at the image this painted in her mind and nodding.

"Whenever I beat Robb, I crowed to everyone in Winterfell, much to Robb's annoyance."

"He's young yet." Oberyn laughed at the image of the Young Wolf pouting at his sister's triumph. "Doran was by then so tested by battle and life he was secure enough to be proud of me rather than vexed by my gloating. When Arya bests you, I believe you shall brag more than she shall."

"Of course." Lyarra agreed and Oberyn considered what he wanted to say next.

"Tell me something else of your siblings."

"If I do, will you tell me who else bested your young, arrogant self?"

"Monstrous, perhaps, and prideful. I am not  _ arrogant _ ."

She scoffed at him, but readily went on.

"I've always known that Robb didn't like spiders, but I didn't realize he was really scared of them until Gwyn came." Lyarra told the story with guilty glee. "Gwyn was just arrived and so jumpy, and none of us knew how to treat a fosterling. She came up the stairs holding something in her hand and when Robb and I saw her, she put it behind her back."

"Robb, of course, assumed it was something she should not have."

"We'd heard so much evil of the Lannisters, and she came from the Rock." Lyarra agreed. "He jumped to conclusions and demanded she hand it to him.  _ She did _ ."

"She dropped a spider into his hand." Oberyn grinned evilly.

"A _ big, hairy one _ . The kind that lives in the Godswood around the hot pools and goes dormant during Winter."

"Did he scream?"

"I don't think _ I _ could hit a note that high if I tried."

Oberyn was more than amused at that and paid his debt when he'd stopped laughing.

"Arthur was but two inches taller than I, but he likely had a stone of muscle on me for most of our lives."

"Ser Arthur Dayne?" Lyarra asked curiously and he nodded.

"The same, but he was merely Arthur to all of us who grew up together at the Water Gardens before our fostering… Well, or  _ Art _ , if I wished to start a fight. He  _ hated _ to be called that." Oberyn recalled and felt a sudden flare of anger again for his death. "He did not deserve a dagger in the back."

"If we all got the deaths we deserved, we'd either be well and truly fucked or peacefully go in our sleep." Lyarra replied dryly. "I cannot decide which."

"True.. such language though. May I take credit for corrupting you?" Oberyn admitted. "Anyway, to tell the story… Arthur did not always best me, but he had the most annoying habit."

“I’m afraid Theon corrupted my vocabulary years ago.” Lyarra replied with a small smile, then nudged him to go on. "Yes?"

"Despite his size, Arthur was one of the few men I knew who was as fast as I, often faster. He trained like  _ no-one _ I have ever known, and could thusly do things no-one else could. As such, he had this one truly annoying thing he did in a spar if he was vexed with you and you were not wearing boiled leathers or other things for safety."

Lyarra was rapt. Oberyn grinned and halted the story to kiss her. She responded, but pulled back quickly in exasperation and raised her eyebrows at him to get him to finish the tale. Grinning at having vexed her a bit, Oberyn finished.

"If using blunted, wooden weapons, we often spar bare-chested in Dorne."

"Even the ladies?" Lyarra looked shocked.

Oberyn took a pleased moment to picture that.

"No, but I shall strongly encourage it from now on."

"I'll be sure to tell your daughters you've said so." Lyarra huffed and Oberyn shot her a slightly martyred look before chuckling.

"As I said, Arthur and I would often spar bare-chested. If doing so and he noticed a gap in your defenses or got behind you, Arthur would reach down and grab the back of your smallclothes and then yank them upwards  _ as hard as he could _ ."

Lyarra stared at him in shock.

"This, of course, would drive the cotton into whatever crevices your body possessed with amazing force. Often painful,  _ always _ humiliating, it would also pinch like the seven hells in other locations-."

Lyarra buried her face in his neck and shook with laughter.

"The  _ Sword of the Morning _ did that?"

Ghost stood from where she was rolling in the grass nearby and directed a silent growl off to the side. Oberyn looked up to see a lone, familiar figure approaching in a blue-green surcoat with a silver seahorse embroidered across the front.

"He did." A warm, masculine voice offered with sadness and humor intermingled. "Got him into a fistfight with Oswell Whent, if I recall."

Ghost, having alerted them, sat down next to the bench and kept a watchful, but non-hostile, eye on the approaching lord. Oberyn held Lyarra where she was, rather than letting her automatically bounce up and then drop into a curtsey. First, it was unseemly haste for a princess. Secondly, it would make her dizzy.

"Lord Monford, it's ever a pleasure. Forgive me if I don't rise?"

"If it weren't for the presence of a lady, I could comment on that." The pale haired man drawled, then offered Lyarra a smile and a bow. "Princess Lyarra, it's a pleasure to meet one so blessed by the Gods. May I be the first to congratulate you on your forthcoming motherhood? I sincerely doubt our King has done so."

That much was true. The Usurper had made it clear when he'd swept Lyarra away that he was displeased to find out about the pregnancy. Oberyn could only seeth in imagining why. Even if she were not his Marked wife and soulmate, Oberyn would have hated to see any young girl fall into that man's clutches. He used women like objects, offered them pay only as a second thought and then derided those he gave coin to as though he weren't sharing himself with them, and then gave no thought to his children's future. Oberyn had heard of the many bastards that the Hand had to scramble to find some settlement for.

Curling his hand over his wife's belly, he reminded himself that the child was safe. Ser Arron and Ser Daemon were both shadowing them at a respectful distance, just in case, and none of the ladies of their household would go anywhere without a guard. He would stay. He would find some way to gather every ounce of harmful information possible and lay a network of goodwill in place with the smallfolk, and then he would return to Doran where hopefully Quentyn would arrive with either a dragon bride or some news of a Targaryen left alive in the world. Or, rather, one who was not ancient and sworn to the Night's Watch.

Viserys Targaryen's death was a blow. It was one they anticipated due to rumors, but there was no mistaking that it was a problem. Without a dragon, who would Doran rally the people around? Even with the love of the commons, there was no way they could hope to put one of their own kin on the Iron Throne. Most of the nobles of Westeros still looked down their hypocritical noses at Dorne. The fact that House Martell had the best blood claim after House Baratheon would be immaterial.

The man leaning comfortably against a tree trunk opposite them undoubtedly felt the same. Lord Monford Velaryon's House may have been far removed from its Targaryen marriages and past, but it still considered the dragons kin. Though pardoned, they were loyalists to the core. The man had risked the Usurper's wrath by directly challenging him for Viserys' body, but it had been to little avail.

"I am sure the King was merely startled." Lyarra blushed slightly and Oberyn regretfully allowed her to rise and seat herself beside him on the bench. Her hand rested over her belly and he twined his fingers with hers. "I thank you for your kind words, Lord Monford."

"You'll forgive me for prying, Princess, but I had heard that today was your nameday?"

"It is." Lyarra blushed, but smiled, obviously pleased to have it acknowledged. "It was celebrated within the family earlier."

It had been. After the cloth merchant had left, they had adjourned to Lord Stark's quarters. There a fine meal was spread out with all of Lyarra's favorites. Oberyn had been pleased to see her eat well, and then fall into a nap afterward against his chest as the combined company of Oberyn, his uncle, and her family celebrated. It was embarrassing that the celebration was over his wife having just seen five-and-ten years given his age, but after the fifth comment on the discrepancy between them, Oberyn had settled it in a mature and proper fashion.

Once the Lady Arya had gotten the mashed turnip out of her ear, she'd agreed that anything over three comments in one meal was excessive, and apologized. Once Lyarra had stopped laughing, she'd agreed that three was a reasonable number. Lord Stark had refused to get involved at all, but proven he wasn't entirely without feelings by seeming pleased with the temporary insanity.

Lord Gargalen had chosen to respond by telling a tale of Oberyn's childhood. Oberyn had actually enjoyed that, if only so he could prove to his uncle that he could not be shamed by such means. In fact, he'd countered with a far worse story and then demanded Lyarra tell him one of hers in a prelude to their exchange on the bench. Lady Arya had jumped in instead and Lord Stark had been left gaping as he finally found out who was behind an incident that had left all of the redheaded family members with green hair.

It had also left all of them wheezing with laughter, Lord Stark included, when the man realized he could  _ not _ send a  _ Princess of Dorne _ to her bed without dessert. Especially on her nameday. Not to mention when she shared that bed with her husband.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself?" Lord Monford went on.

"It was lovely." Lyarra agreed earnestly and her fingers drifted up to touch the fine strand of silver-gray pearls resting against her throat while Oberyn preened.

On one hand, he was infuriated that she had so few fine gifts in her life. On the other, he was beginning to realize that even a small gift would result in a happy, shy, sweetly pleased armful of wife. One, moreover, who was remarkably easy to seduce into lovemaking as the gift left her feeling cared for and important to the husband who'd given her the thing. It was remarkable, really, that she had the same reaction to a cotton scarf, dyed with a carved block and worth no more than a few coppers, that she had to the jewels he'd given her today. Oberyn promised to make that observation aloud to the Usurper at the first opportunity so that he might compare it to his arrogant, grasping wife.

"In that case, I hope my own invitation would not be redundant, but I would ask if you wished to dine again with my household?" Velaryon offered with a slight bow and a smile. "It's been too long since you joined us, Prince Oberyn, and another beautiful young woman is always welcome. If for no other reason than I hear from Lady Jynessa that you may be our best defense against a terrible danger?"

Oberyn stiffened at that, and it was on the tip of his tongue to ask what the man meant, but the Lord of Tides went on quickly with a wry smile.

"You see, Your Grace, my brother, Captain Aurane Waters, believes he can sing-."

" _ Still _ ?" Oberyn demanded, half-amused and half-admiring of the level of detail the man was putting into an excuse to draw Oberyn aside for a talk amongst the Usurper's enemies. It wasn't as if either would say anything of real value to each other in King's Landing. Considering Varys' little birds Oberyn wasn't saying anything useful to the man unless he was out to sea on one of Lord Velaryon's ships. "Lyarra, darling, Lord Velaryon's grandmother and Ser Arthur Dayne's grandmother were sisters. As such I've known the man for years, and I must say that he speaks the truth of his half-brother; his singing would shame a choking gull.  _ Please _ , save us!"

"That is too cruel." Lyarra admonished them, but grinned and rose to drop into a careful curtsey. "I can hardly refuse such a plea, however, I beg you to not take Lady Jynessa too seriously. Her praise of my voice is overkind."

"I cannot say for myself until I've had the honor to hear you." Lord Velayron offered Lyarra his arm and Oberyn tugged his wife gently to his own side and gave the other man a droll look, earning a nod and a small smile in return. "What I can say is that if Lady Jynessa's praise is accurate, I will  _ never _ have been happier to hear such a talented singer."

 

* * *

 

 

Tyrion coughed heavily as he staggered to one of the lowered chairs he kept in his own quarter and sank down. The scent of burned wood and wet, charred canvas filled his lungs with a painful, acrid coating. He turned and spat into the fire, as if in revenge, to clear his raw throat.

" _ Thank you _ ." He croaked as the lean, dark man in boiled leathers standing beside him handed him a full cup of wine and poured another for himself from the carafe on the sideboard. A carafe that Tyrion had thought he'd upset when he'd staggered into the room and fallen into the sideboard for support. "Bronn, you've not only saved my life, you've saved my  _ wine _ ."

"Well, we both know which you value more."

"Truer words!" Tyrion said in between gulping down the heavenly nectar, savoring the way it burned at his throat and soothed it at once.

A moment later any hope of peace fell apart when, unannounced, Tyrion's father strode into the room. The wrathful expression on his face would have made Tyrion wince, were he not used to being the subject of such glares. He merely kept a tight grip on his goblet and on his wits as he watched his father sit opposite of him in the full-sized guest chair that Bronn usually sat in. Tyrion didn't know why his father insisted on disdaining his stature; as much as Lord Tywin enjoyed looming, you would think he'd have appreciated a dwarf for a son.

"I heard from Lord Arryn that you were attacked by brigands."

"You make it sound as though I were one of the brigands, my lord." Tyrion rasped. "You may be assured, however, that our family's pride is safe with me. I would never consent to a career so dishonorable unless I was at least the  _ admiral _ of a pirate fleet."

"You were journeying to the hunting lodge with Baelish's books. What happened?"

"What happened, my Lord Father," Tyrion replied, "Is that we were presumed to be another shipment of food. Why we would be such when coming from the capital I do not know. It changed nothing of the fact that we were set upon by a group of brigands. It seems the peasants in the countryside will no longer offer them any sustenance as protection against pillage and they're becoming desperate. On finding out we did not have what they sought or any amount of gold worth stealing, they torched the wagons and began to discuss ransom."

"Where were your guards?"

" _ Dead _ , once the brigands came upon us." Tyrion handed his empty goblet to Bronn, who refilled it and then cleared his throat.

"No, thank you." The same icy civility that could so terrify his enemies just made Bronn busy himself getting his own goblet refilled as well as Tyrion's. "How? You were guarded by knights of the Vale."

"As Bronn can tell you, knights die readily enough on the steel of desperate, hard-hearted men."

"You stick 'em, they all bleed out pretty much the same." Bronn did observe and Tywin gave him a droll look before breathing out slowly and sitting back and turning to the sellsword instead.

"Details, please. How well-armed were these men?"

"They wore mail and carried swords and shields." Bronn scratched his beard. "They were smallfolk, that's clear enough and had no formal training. Don't mean they can't fight, and if you put a random bloke in decent mail and boiled leathers, he'll learn fast enough. This stuff came from some keep the Plague hollowed out, likely enough."

"Some of the armor bore the sigil of House Harte, and their seat was well-looted after their line fell to the Plague." Tyrion added. "I saw a few pieces from House Mallery."

Lord Tywin didn't rail that he'd told his goodson, the King, to secure the castles of the fallen during the Plague  _ quickly _ . It wasn't his father's way to rail or yell. Tyrion had to agree with the strategy; Lord Tywin's cold silence was much more intimidating.

"The wagons are gone, so I take it Littlefinger's books are as well."

"Yes."

"There should be copies."

" _ Should _ is a dangerous word. I've found it carries disappointment with it like a mule carries its master's burden." Tyrion winced and took another deep pull of his wine as he brushed at the soot encrusted into his tunic and his own leathers. He'd killed three men in battle and fought well with his axe; he didn't bother to tell his father of it. He'd take Lord Arryn's praise as the only one he was likely to get. "More than a year past, when Lord Baelish died, Jon Arryn first realized how incomprehensible the bookkeeping was and grew suspicious of what it might hide. The Hand ordered copies to be made. This directly coincided with the height of the Plague when the King was actually making an effort towards frugality. He decided to save parchment and labor costs and stopped the Maester's apprentices who were scribing, sending them out instead to minister to the sick with the Maesters."

"Lord Arryn was never informed, I would imagine." Lord Tywin's tone was cold and made frostier by the real disgust coloring it.

"He learned of it as I did, when he went down with the Keeper of the Keys to open the vaults and retrieve the copies." Tyrion sank further back into his chair. "If Lord Baelish  _ did _ steal the Crown blind with no-one the wiser, the proof of where that wealth has gone and any hope of retrieving it is now ash."

"You will start over."

"Yes, I will." Tyrion acknowledged the order testily. "I planned to anyway. Tomorrow Bronn and I will be in every whorehouse in King's Landing for our business for once, not the girls therein. Most of Baelish's creatures have long fled, but mayhaps we can find a whore who heard someone say something of use."

"I've had enough of your presence in such places and how it reflects on our House." Lord Tywin countered. "I will send people to find the whoremonger's leavings. There are other ledgers. The steward at the Red Keep, the kennel master, the master of ceremonies appointed for each tourney thrown. I want you to press  _ all _ of them. Until the other searches bear fruit you will reconstruct the Crowns' expenses one shop and one barrel of ale at the time if need be."

"I look forward to a lifetime in my current position." Tyrion said dully and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose before straightening under his father's glare.

The Old Lion sat, obviously not done with his least favored child.

"Who is Lady Gwyn Parren?"

"Hm?"

"Are you already so drunk I must repeat myself." Tywin asked sharply.

"No, though I aspire to such feats, I assure you."

"Lord Eddard Stark said she was one of your aunt's wards at Casterly Rock. He was preposterous enough to imply that some ill was done to her there. Who was she?"

Tyrion had to wrack his brain to come up with an answer. Luckily it was forthcoming. The memories it stirred were a bit bittersweet.

"She was a ward of Aunt Genna's." Tyrion agreed. "She came to us about… five years ago? She was eight. She was the lovely young blonde in the blue dress at the last feast?  _ My _ , she has grown into her mother's looks."

"The girl who so resembled your sister?" Tywin spoke, his eyes narrowing. "I recall her father, he was one of the Lannisport Guard and an able knight. Her mother was some lesser daughter of the Lannisport Lannisters. I have no memory of the girl herself."

"Yes, that's why Aunt Genna took her in. You know what an incompetent Lord Parren is, and his Heir is worse. She was at the Rock for about two years, I think."

"You're not sure?" His father scowled and Tyrion couldn't help the annoyance in his tone as he responded.

"If you will recall, I spent a great deal of time two years ago trying to buy goats from angry Mountain Clansmen in the Vale. Who'd rather kill a man than have a drink. Then there was my  _ lovely _ stint as Lady Lysa Arryn's prisoner, since I was supposedly conspiring with the Mountain Clans to spread the Plague through witchcraft and murder her dear son." Tyrion turned to Bronn. " _ Thank you _ , by the way, for helping out with that."

"Always happy to oblige when the price is good."

Tyrion raised his glass to the sellsword and dealt with his father's calculating frown. He'd been dismissed from his father's mind while the Old Lion was obvious displeased with himself for missing some detail. His father, Tyrion often thought, believed that he could know everything and keep track of all of the comings and goings of his household and demesne down to the last grain of sand. The problem came when  _ others _ believed it. The amazing thing was how close he actually came to doing it.

He didn't bother to mention that his father had made only lukewarm attempts to rescue him. In Tywin's case, it was a matter of his House's honor and face rather than any worry for his dwarf son. With Lord Arryn agreeing entirely with Tywin on the matter and coming to settle his wife, Lord Tywin had felt no need to get involved. The fact that, by the time the Hand of the King had arrived, Tyrion was free and in Gulltown and Lady Lysa had thrown herself through the Moon Door in grief for her son and - apparently - Littlefinger just made it less of a concern for Tywin.

"You would not know why she was sent North, then." His father's statement was more of a question. "Or why Lord Stark accepted a child with our blood, however distant, into a household where he'd never bothered to take a fosterling before."

"No, Father." Tyrion answered the question even though it hadn't technically been one. "Aunt Genna would know."

"And not a single detail of the girl do you recall that would suggest her place in your aunt's household?"

Tired of the deceptive mildness of the tongue lashing, Tyrion lashed out.

"Well, I do recall that she spent a great deal of time in the kitchens. Her mother's mother had apparently managed the kitchens at Casterly Rock for years."

Tyrion would not mention that he recalled the girl when she first came to the Rock fairly well, now that he thought of it. He wouldn't say that the small eight-year-old been unafraid of his looks and had been willing to share tarts and other things she slipped from the kitchen with him. He most certainly wouldn't mention that, after a few weeks of being quite friendly, the girl had taken to avoiding him like the Plague and looking at him with worried eyes. There was no use in suggesting it had hurt to a man who'd likely enjoy hearing it.

"She baked." Lord Tywin suddenly said. "Buns, filled with white cream."

Tyrion stared at his father in shock and Lord Tywin gave him a dry look.

"Your Uncle Kevan was growing painfully fat two years ago."

Tyrion knew that was not true, though he'd often enough seen his uncle carrying one of the pastries. He'd rarely seen his Aunt Genna host a tea without a platter of them by her elbow, either. They were a common fixture in her solar, and she'd explained to him with a laugh that the recipe had been used by a woman in the kitchens who'd eventually come to run them before her husband grew to be a wealthy enough merchant that she could leave her position without causing offense. They'd been a favorite, Lady Genna maintained, of all of Lord Tytos Lannister's children.

"You will start reconstructing the books tonight." Lord Tywin stood up, and that tiny hint of humanity closed like a cracked door slamming.

"I will." Tyrion nodded in acknowledgement, as eager to see that door locked and barred as he wished in the darkest and most damaged parts of his heart that his father might have told him some part of what his aunt and uncle had.

Even worse? Now he really wanted one of those damned cream buns.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Madrigal_in_Training deserves complete and total credit for the idea of Tywin deciding that Ned Stark must survive and becoming his fairy godfather. It was a lovely idea and I thank her dearly for allowing me to insert it into this fic!


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert throws a party, Lady Olenna throws shade, Lyarra finds a library, and Tyrion finally gets an eclair.

**Chapter Twenty-Three - 297 A.C.**

 

"Walda, you've outdone yourself." Lyarra grinned in delight as she looked around the small, out of the way, room that her lady had led her to.

 

Lady Walda Frey grinned happily as she led Lyarra inside with their arms linked. Going up the stairs had left Lyarra frustrated that such a simple thing had made her dizzy, so Walda had taken steps to counter that in a manner that wouldn't cause her princess embarrassment. Lyarra appreciated that deeply.

 

Almost as deeply as she was delighted by the little library she'd been led into. Packed with books, it was also spotlessly clean. The reason why was obvious and it made Lyarra grin.

Gwyn, a look of pure exasperation upon her face, stood off to one corner of the room where there was a small space free of books. Today she was wearing a white linen blouse over a full black skirt with a stylized pattern of waves embroidered in white and blue lines around the hem. Over that, she wore a dark blue bodice style corset with straps over the shoulders and laces down the back. Bright flowers were heavily embroidered and accented with little beads all across the bodice.

 

Lyarra had been fascinated to hear that this was how Gwyn had spent a good portion of her life dressing. Apparently it was standard attire for girls in the Westerlands who weren't of such high nobility that they were chasing the fashions worn in King's Landing or the Free Cities. Lyarra couldn't recall Gwyn having worn such clothing before. Gwyn then explained that there was a certain expected standard of dress that all of the fosterlings at Casterly Rock were required to keep. She'd grown out of all of her old clothing by the time she came north and made what she was wearing during the trip south while Lyarra was applying herself to her lessons in being a Martell princess.

 

Gwyn had also tied a broad white apron over her skirt and bodice and pinned it in place. Her blonde hair, twisted up into elaborate braids, was hidden by a practical kerchief. Lyarra no longer wondered where Gwyn had been of the morning, as she took in the spotlessly clean library and the large tin bucket in the corner, broom beside it, and several dusty rags draped over the edge of the bucket.

 

"I don't know what the servants were about, letting this room get so dusty but still putting vermin traps out." Gwyn complained as she took the kerchief off of her hair and folded it and her apron up. She nodded towards one of the wooden boxes tucked into another corner.

 

"Were there many spiders?" Walda asked pleasantly as she claimed the room's larger chair and Lyarra chose a comfortable chair upholstered in faded orange leather.

 

"Quite a few!"

 

Lyarra looked at the stoneware jar and its pierced lid that Gwyn was holding. She watched as her friend twisted a leather thong into place to hold the top, tied it, and then slipped the little jar into her pocket. Because what Gwyn needed were  _ more _ spiders. Lyarra sighed, but decided to leave be. At least Gwyn seemed happy. Her attempts at seeming herself aside, Lyarra knew that the Red Keep and everything inside made her nervous.

 

"Did you bring everything?" Gwyn went on briskly, settling down on the faded rug in a tailor's sit, with her skirt spread out around her prettily.

 

"Yes!" Walda grinned and Lyarra watched her take the canvas shoulder bag she'd carried and hand it to Gwyn. "Though Ser Damien insisted on carrying the basket."

 

"I could hardly allow a  _ lady _ to carry everything." The Dornish knight smiled and Lyarra was about to do the same when Gwyn let out a dry little huff and raised her thumb to the corner of her mouth exaggeratedly.

 

"You've got some blueberry jam _right_ _here_."

 

"Ah." Ser Damien's hand came up to touch his own lips in the same space, finding the smear. "My apologies."

 

Ser Arron let out a scoffing sound as he settled into his own guard post. Ser Damien looked around the room and took up his own. They were clearly armed and on duty, but had agreed with standing inside the room to preserve Lyarra's peace.

 

Fearing another invitation from the Queen, Lyarra decided to simply be  _ unavailable _ in the morning. The best way to manage that without giving offense was to hide. Hiding in the Red Keep was a difficult thing, or had been until Walda had relayed that one of the servants had chatted with her about a library nobody used while she was down in the kitchen with Gwyn. After that was settled and a plan established, food was gathered, and they left. Lyarra's momentary worry about Gwyn vanishing was even assuaged, since it was clear she'd spent the early hours of the morning cleaning and not wandering about and causing trouble.

 

Of course, Lyarra never looked into the bucket. Had she done so, she'd have noticed that there was a trencher hidden amongst the dust, along with a stained cloth napkin, an empty wineskin, and the well-picked bones of a chicken. Not having looked, however, Lyarra remained blissfully certain of her friend's lack of innocence when it came to sneaking about when she'd been told not to.

 

Lyarra soon rose to look among the books, delighted by so many unfamiliar titles. Her delight became something close to ecstasy when she found what amounted to an entire bookcase stuffed to the brim with scrolls in High Valyrian. As Gwyn had been settling in with a crochet hook and white silk thread, rather than setting down to read, she was sent with Ser Damien to go back to Lyarra's quarters for quills, ink, and parchment. When she returned, Lyarra began to put things into order.

 

"You've wonderfully neat writing, Walda, you take the lap desk." Lyarra handed the lap desk she'd made herself for lessons two years before to her friend. "You don't know any High Valyrian, do you?"

 

"Oh, no, Grandfather-Lord Walder always said I should be grateful that my older cousins and aunts were there to teach me my letters at all, let alone to worry about dead languages such to make myself seem educated." Walda wrinkled her nose wryly as she added another bit of Lord Walder Frey's grandfatherly wisdom. "After all, what men want from their wives is located between their  _ legs _ , not between their  _ ears _ ."

 

" _ Charming _ ." Ser Arron muttered darkly.

 

"You can write what I translate for you." Lyarra decided, not bothering to state her own opinion. "Gwyn…"

 

"My writing's still awful so I'll remind everyone to eat."

 

"You'll also fetch new scrolls when I'm done."

 

"I can do that as well."

 

"Ser Arron-."

 

"We're on duty, Your Grace." The one-eyed warrior told her, his expression composed but his single dark eye twinkling. "Ser Damien and I will, of course, make sure you're safe as you go about your scribing."

 

Lyarra huffed, momentarily put-out that she couldn't conscript more steady hands for work, but accepted it for what it was. She happily settled in to read the first scroll, which turned out to be a treatise on construction. It was one of a series of forty, she quickly realized.

 

"We'll  _ never _ get all these copied before we leave for Dorne!" Lyarra lamented.

 

" _ Such _ a shame." Gwyn muttered and Lyarra reached down and flicked her ear.

 

"Maybe we could read through all of the titles first?" Walda suggested. "Then we could pick the ones that are most important to copy."

 

"If we must do this. We should bring Arya with us, and Lord Gargalen if he's willing and there's time." Gwyn pointed out and Lyarra nodded in agreement.

 

"Lord Gargalen could read and Arya could scribe. Her writing is getting much better."

 

"Being punished with calligraphy will do that if you're punished enough."

 

"I actually think Arya's starting to enjoy it." Lyarra smiled. "She's seeing progress and she does enjoy hearing her work praised."

 

"Who doesn't?" Walda asked wistfully, then added with perfect practicality. "It's a good accomplishment for a lady to have, though. Arya's lovely in her own way, but she can't sing and I don't think she'll ever sew anything willingly that isn't a wound. Calligraphy is a good middle ground, especially if she picks up a cultured language or two."

 

"Old Valyrian?" Lyarra perked up. "Maester Luwin taught me, and I could teach her. Oberyn could help, he knows so many languages."

 

"Start with the obscenities." Gwyn suggested.

 

Ser Arron's helpless and obviously feigned coughing fit got all of them back on track. Gwyn went back to creating a new hairnet for Lyarra. Interspersing the white silk being knotted with her crochet hook of polished stone beads, she worked silently while Lyarra read and Gwyn wrote. It all fall into a hushed quiet, smelling of parchment, peace, and knowledge the way that all libraries ought to. Lyarra felt more at ease than she had in too long, for though she'd enjoyed her family's celebration of her nameday the day before, and even enjoyed Lord Velaryon's late entertainment, there was always that nervousness present that she wasn't living up to someone's expectations. Books, lovely things that they were, expected nothing and offered everything they had in return.

 

The quiet was shattered and Lyarra jumped a bit when the door silently swung open. She was left staring wide-eyed at a startled face a foot lower than where she'd anticipated it would be. A black eye and a green eye blinked at her in surprise. Then, with surprising grace for his size and short-limbed frame, the dwarf in the doorway bowed.

 

"Forgive me for disturbing you, Princess Lyarra, I hadn't realized that my secret library had become so popular."

 

"Oh, no, Lord Tyrion. I had no intention of intruding on anyone's privacy. Are these books yours? If so, I'm sorry for the trespass."

 

Who else could it be? Lyarra felt safe in her assumption that a dwarf dressed in a dark red doublet accented with gold, matching trousers, fine boots, and with a belt holding a dagger chased in gold with a hilt set with red stones was a Lannister. The lion embroidered in heavy Westerland's embroidery around the collar of said doublet just confirmed it. After all, how many Lannister dwarves could there be?

 

"Oh, no, nothing of the sort." He quickly countered, his expression briefly showing surprise at the courtesy with which he'd been addressed as he moved further into the room with only a bare sideways glance at where Ser Daemon and Ser Arron were both watching him closely. "When I say my  _ secret _ library, I mean only a place come to be alone. Few others have found it, though I assure you that I will offer no protest to sharing it with a beautiful princess and her stunning ladies."

 

Walda had been rather taken aback at the Imp's appearance, but she titered slightly at being described as stunning. Lyarra caught Gwyn out of the corner of her eyes and found she was sitting quietly. Her expression was pleasant, but perfectly bland as she continued to work on the hairnet. Lyarra felt a hint of real caution overtake her.

 

Bits and pieces of life in Casterly Rock had slipped from Gwyn's lips since she'd given Oberyn Amory Lorch's name. She now knew that Lady Genna was proud, but could be kind. She was, however, often given to overlooking the fosterling girls she was responsible for, if they were of the lowest rank. She simply had too many to pay attention to and there were always a few of the most noble who needed extra attention to curb bad habits before they went into whatever powerful marriage alliance they'd been assigned in their cradle.

 

She knew Ser Kevan Lannister was not unkind, either. He was, according to Gwyn, steadfast in the extreme and was usually very fair when any dispute was brought before him. The servants generally liked the man. They couldn't afford to trust him though, because what Tywin Lannister willed, his brother carried out.

 

Of the Imp, Lyarra knew next to nothing. Gwyn had scoffed at the idea that he was a monster when Arya had tried to turn it into a scary tale. She'd said he was just a dwarf. Tyrion Lannister had no tail, nor wings, and as far as she knew, he was entirely a man without any extra parts. Not that she'd ever attempted to investigate that, but what was so special about a dwarf? They, like all other sorts of people, were born every day.

 

She had added that he read a lot. She'd said that, of the Lannisters, he was likely the best of a bad lot. That was all; of his true character Lyarra knew nothing. Of his father and older siblings, Lyarra only knew that Gwyn feared them. Well, that and all of the very gruesome reasons that her husband hated their House and everyone in it.

 

"Thank you for your kind words, but we can leave if we're disturbing your peace." Lyarra volunteered.

 

"Not in the least." He answered, then paused and came forward further, ignoring both of the Dornish knights to look down at the scroll Lyarra was reading in delighted fascination. "Is that Ivescor's treatise on the setting of stone?"

 

"Yes, it's the third scroll." Lyarra blinked. "Do you read High Valyrian?"

 

"Oh, I read everything I can. A mind is a weapon like any other, and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge."

 

Lyarra shot Gwyn a triumphant look. She'd been trying to get her friend to read more regularly since she'd become lettered. So far it was not a struggle Lyarra could claim to be winning. Gwyn ignored her pointedly.

 

"Do you read now, Lady Gwyn?" The Imp asked, as if divining Lyarra's thoughts. "If I recall, you did not before you left us for the cold and dreary North."

 

"I'm lettered now, your lordship." Gwyn's response was subdued.

 

Lord Tyrion climbed up into the sole empty chair that remained, one with rather collapsed cushions that Gwyn had preferred the floor to. Lyarra was left watching as his attention fixed on her friend. It left her uncomfortable and wondering if she shouldn't say something. If Gwyn needed protection, Lyarra wasn't going to allow her to sit there miserably; if nothing else, they could just leave. As it was, guilty as she felt for not whisking Gwyn away to safety, she couldn't help hoping this led them to finding out something more about Gwyn's past.

 

"I'm very pleased to hear it. I was disappointed when you turned down my offer of lessons. I was surprised when you left us, as well. You were something of a favorite of my Aunt's."

 

"Fosterlings, like gowns, go out of fashion all the time."

 

The mismatched eyes snapped brightly at that hint of sass and he nodded.

 

"And yet a dwarf is forever stale and inappropriate."

 

"I wouldn't presume to know, your lordship."

 

The spark was gone just like that, snuffed out with careful, measured words.

 

"Lord Tyrion." Lyarra interrupted, feeling uncomfortable with the attention the man was paying her friend even though she couldn't fault his manners. "Have you read through this series of scrolls? All forty, I mean."

 

"I have! They were quite diverting. I'd thought to experiment with the liquid stone mixture it talks of making in the fifteenth scroll, but I couldn't translate some of the more esoteric terms by the time I got that far in."

 

"I look forward to the challenge, or I would if I was likely to have enough time to read so far into the series." Lyarra said honestly and made a face. "I doubt my Prince will tolerate the capital for so long."

 

"I don't know how anyone  _ tolerates _ it at all, then I remember that I can't leave and I'm reminded of the finest teacher of tolerance in existence:  _ entrapment _ ."

 

Lyarra felt herself snort out a soft laugh despite herself and watched the mismatched eyes glitter in pleasure at having wrung a laugh from her and a grin from Lady Walda. Gwyn remained unmoved. She crocheted quietly, not quite able to drift into the background under Tyrion Lannister's sharp eyes, but certainly doing her best.

 

"Why have you not made translations?"

 

"My joy is in reading for my own benefit, I'm afraid. Princess, I simply don't possess the reserves of self-sacrifice required to spend my time translating for others."

 

"The Lannister capacity for work must skip a generation." Ser Arron observed dryly from his place by the wall.

 

"I must say that I think that is unfair." Gwyn finally spoke again, this time a hint of her normal pertness creeping into her voice. "No-one who has seen Lord Tyrion drink could accuse him of lacking capacity."

 

"I should have known better than to hope to keep secrets from a fellow inmate at the Rock." The Imp looked pleased rather than offended by the sally. "I, of course, take great pride in  _ all _ of my accomplishments."

 

"Considering that you once claimed to be the God of Tits and Wine at a Sevenday Feast, I believe you, Lord Tyrion."

 

Lyarra watched as Tyrion paused. His expression turned thoughtful. Then, after a moment, he turned a surprised and slightly amused smile on the young girl.

 

"You could not have been invited to that feast, Lady Gwyn, given you were no more than eight when it happened."

 

"I was a cupbearer."

 

" _ Ah _ ."

 

Lord Tyrion turned his mismatched eyes on Lyarra's friend curiously, and Lyarra suddenly had the strangest feeling. For the first time since she'd become a Princess, Lyarra realized she was utterly superfluous. Lyarra wasn't sure if it was a relief to return to observing from the sidelines, or if she was worried. Gwyn's hands were shaking in her lap now, pressed together to minimize it as she looked the Imp of Casterly Rock directly in the face as they spoke. Her blue eyes were steady, and as impenetrable as the blue waters of the Bay of Ice.

 

"You also helped in the kitchens. Tell me, Lady Gwyn, do you still bake?" He asked pleasantly, then turned to Lyarra. Gwyn visibly stiffened at his next words. "I was just speaking with my father last night, how we missed the Lady Gwyn's cooking. Her grandmother spent decades running the Rock's kitchens, and then her mother would sometimes be called up to manage a particularly important feast after the Lady Gwyn’s grandmother was no longer available."

 

"I was all but raised in a kitchen, my lord. I would miss it if I were to stop." Gwyn applied, visibly leaning forward as she drew the other man's attention from Lyarra.

 

Lyarra caught a flicker in the mismatched eyes and suddenly had the feeling that Lord Tyrion's attentions in speaking to her had been to engage Gwyn further all along. Confused, wary, and somewhat amused to see someone who could get Gwyn to do what  _ they _ wanted inside a conversation, rather than the reverse, Lyarra sat quietly and listened.

 

"Then may I ask if you've done any baking lately?" He prompted with a sudden sideways grin, and Lyarra felt the tension in her chest ease into amusement even as Gwyn's look became more guarded.

 

"Yes, may I ask what prompted Lord Tywin to speak of someone of as little consequence as myself?" Gwyn's face was now a perfectly controlled mask of innocent curiosity, though her hands were pressed together in her lap with enough force to bleach all of her knuckles white.

 

"Accomplished young maidens are always of interested to the court." The Imp declared grandly. "Especially those who are even distant kin. We are distant kin, are we not?"

 

"Much as the Reynes were, my lord."

 

"Gwyn baked just this morning, Lord Tyrion, though I would not eat in a library." Lyarra interrupted, no longer liking where the conversation seemed to go, and especially disliking whatever message had just passed between the two Westerlanders. She used her foot to nudge the cloth covered basket that Gwyn had brought up with them out to where she could reach it with her slipper-clad foot. "Are you hungry?"

 

"I am afraid I was closeted with The Keepers of the Keys for overlong and have not eaten since last night." The dwarf gleefully accepted one of the cream stuffed hot buns from the basket before sliding off of his chair. His mismatched eyes were now thoughtful. "My eternal thanks, ladies, but I am afraid my duties are calling and their shrill cries are not to be ignored."

 

"Your duties as the King's Counter?" Lyarra asked, curious as she'd heard that much discussed around the Red Keep; there seemed to be general discontent and mockery over the fact that the dwarf had been appointed to such an important post. Lyarra, a victim of mockery herself, felt a sort of kinship in that. She just wished it all felt less awkward, between Gwyn's odd behavior and her knowledge of her husband's hate… it was just an odd meeting.

 

"Indeed, and so now I am off in search of something to count." He relayed with a short bow, the light from the high windows reflecting on his blond hair as Ser Daemon opened the door to let him out.

 

"Well, he was surprisingly pleasant." Walda offered after a slight pause. Then she added, "I don't think we should trust him at all."

 

"Smartest thing I've heard all day." Ser Daemon muttered and Ser Arron agreed with a grunt before insisting that everyone return to the Princess' quarters so that she could rest before they went to the Godswood as Lyarra had requested earlier.

 

* * *

Lord Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, reflected that his day was starting well. By inviting Ned to the Small Council meeting, he had assured Robert would come to it, and that was no small feat. He needed to get at least some matters settled. Gods be good, it even looked as if that would happen and the King would be involved for once.

 

"Well, Brother, how goes sorting out the dungeons?"

 

That was not the appropriate way to address a Lord Paramount who was also your Master of Laws, but thankfully no offense seemed to be taken. Lord Renly even offered a thin smile at his brother before any hope of pleasant news died with the young man clearing his throat. Leaning to the side, he picked up a sheaf of parchment covered in his elegant, but slightly lax, writing and a thick black ledger.

 

"My lords, I have no good news to give you." The young Baratheon spoke. "I  _ finally _ managed to get an honest survey of the dungeons in the Red Keep done, and the City Watch and their lesser gaols as well."

 

Everyone in the room frowned, surprised to see the usually joyful young man's graveness. For his part, it gave Jon hope. Renly Baratheon had grown considerably in trying to meet his responsibilities during the Plague. The smallfolk held him in favor in the Stormlands. If he could grow into his role, surely Robert could change as well even at this late a date. Joffrey's acts at the feast, and learning of his behavior during the moons he'd been entirely unsupervised while the Queen mourned her other children and the King was busy trying to hold his reign together, had opened Robert's eyes where his Heir was concerned. If the Queen would just conceive again he was sure Robert would not make the same mistakes twice.

 

"Currently both the Chief Gaoler and the Chief Undergaoler are locked in the Black Cells."

Lord Renly's words were harsh and his tone completely serious. For a moment, Jon was almost put in mind of Stannis before he dismissed it. It was Steffon Baratheon whose ghost had briefly settled like a cloak over his youngest son. That was a  _ hopeful _ thing, wasn't it?

 

"Of the  _ seventy-eight  _ living prisoners they were holding, only  _ fifteen _ were legally sent into their care by the King's Will or had been caught in the midst of some crime. Sixty-three of the prisoners were common, ranging from a merchant from Pentos rich enough to cause some grief, to a butcher, to a collection of smallfolk who'd come to complain from the villages in the Kingswood about this or that matter."

 

"What were their crimes?" Jon asked and saw Ned's frown deepen out of the corner of his eyes. At least he knew something was amiss if Renly was making the assumption that two figures so central to how the King saw justice done were guilty of something.

 

"They were never told, and I can't get a concrete answer. The smallfolk arrived in the city with the intent to complain about the brigandage or some other matter. They stated their intent to either a member of the Faith, a gold cloak, or sought out some member of the castle staff to try and find when the King was holding open court. Then they were rounded up by the gold cloaks and thrown into the dungeons. These are the figures and names I've recorded. The Pentoshi merchant's going to be a problem though, Robert."

 

Renly rubbed a hand over his face and pushed forward a couple of sheafs of paper which Ned reached for, before pausing and looking to see if Robert was offended. The King just leaned forward. He was willing to work with Ned beside him, interested and involved, as Jon had hoped.

 

"Gods, tell me that the man still has his tongue." The King looked up, his expression twisted and Jon's heart leapt. "And the peasants. What the fucking blazes is going on here, Renly? There are channels for complaint from the commons!"

 

"All of the prisoners are intact, though in bad shape. None were fed and water was seldom given." Renly shook his head in disgust. "The Pentoshi merchant did no wrong. He claims that he managed to get a shipment of grain into the city two moons ago. From what I can tell, he's speaking the truth."

 

"I recall that shipment, actually." Lord Monford Velaryon, the current Master of Ships, leaned forward. "It was much needed, and distributed at the Queen's largesse."

 

"Very generously." Grand Maester Pycelle intoned quickly. "She paid for the allotment from her own purse, and ordered it distributed in the markets."

 

"The merchant himself claims he was unpaid." Renly shook his head and passed the ledger forward, opening it and withdrawing another paper folded inside. "And I checked, Robert. This is the ship's manifest. The Queen promised the man payment and his assistant retained the original contract written in regards to that. You'll see it's signed by her and indicates he's to go to the Queen's Purser. He went to Ser Donal Lantell but was told that the funds would not be forthcoming. He attempted to go to the Queen to complain, but was thrown into the Black Cells instead."

 

Robert's face went red with embarrassment and anger and his fist slammed down on the table.

 

"The Queen sent someone to the dungeons without my _ express approval? _ "

 

Jon didn't know whether to dread or hope for a positive answer. Pycelle looked positively nervous. Lord Velaryon looked pleasantly grave in the way of a man who was trapped in a room full of men he hated and wished nothing to do with. The best he could hope for was chaos and embarrassment for the other parties.

 

Jon found himself wishing that his own man, a decent Knight of the Vale, was sitting in the Master of Coin's seat. He'd been called home to deal with some problem with his Heir's betrothal, however. Instead, Tyrion Lannister sat on his seat, looking at everything through eerily mismatched though intelligent eyes. Jon took a moment to mourn the fact that the most reasonable member of House Lannister was also the least powerful and most despised.

 

"I cannot say that." Renly shook his head. "Your Grace, Brother, from what I've learned, it's possible this was some plot. It seems more likely, however, that it's part of the greater chaos the Plague left behind. Both of the gaolers have held their posts only but recently. Most of the gold cloaks died or fled during the Plague and the chaos that followed. What the City Watch has are untested greenboys and old mercenaries who took the job just to have a steady income. The Red Keep's staff is largely young and untested as well. It honestly seems as though people just didn't know what to do when presented with a complainant. Their reaction was to throw them all in the dungeons, and for all my work, I cannot find any order from anyone of authority issued to them at any time in support of this action. It seems that the lack of organization itself has caused it."

 

"Damnation." Robert growled, then shook his head. "You're the Master of Laws, Renly, what are you doing about it?"

 

Nettled, the young Stag's lips pressed together and thinned before he drew himself up in the shadow of his taller brother and spoke.

 

"I wished to have the King's guidance before I proceed. Many positions remain unfilled. We've got less than a  _ tenth _ of the magistrates we need. Would you give me the authority to appoint them myself, or retain that to the Crown as before?"

 

"Just find people for the jobs, Renly. I didn't appoint you Master of Laws so I'd be doing it for you." Robert snorted, but was apparently satisfied because he leaned back. "The Hand'll write something up, and I'll get it to you soon. Then you can start filling those chairs so this doesn't happen again. A man shouldn't be thrown into a dungeon just because he's got an honest problem he wants dealt with."

 

"Thank you, Your Grace." Renly agreed, looking relieved.

 

Jon made a note to do that directly after the meeting. He hadn't realized the lower-level uncertainty was so grave. If the law was breaking down amongst the smallfolk, then general chaos would follow. He caught Lord Renly's eye and nodded, tapping his own papers and nodding at the door to let him know they would talk after the meeting.

 

"Actually, I have an idea for the City Watch."

 

King Robert snorted and held out his tankard for a hovering servant to refill. Ned, however, turned quietly to listen to Tyrion Lannister. The Imp was sitting on several piled cushions to equalize his height somewhat. He still managed to look confident.

 

"What would that be, Lord Tyrion?" Verys asked in a pleasant tone from his own seat.

 

"The main problem with the gold cloaks right now is that they've got no experience and no-one managing them that they feel they need to obey. They're commoners themselves, and will listen more aptly to a man of the same origins. Likewise, they need the kind of direct management that won't come from someone with an overdeveloped sense of courtesy."

 

"You're saying that the City Watch is a bunch of cutthroat louts from the bad part of Flea Bottom who've worked their way up." Lord Velaryon suggested dryly. "So it would be best to get them a commander who is even cruder and more vicious than they are."

 

" _ Precisely _ ." Lord Tyrion grinned. "Very well said, my lord. I know just the man for the job."

 

"How shocking." Lord Renly muttered and Jon cleared his throat.

 

Several moons before, while in his cups and at his acerbic best, Lord Tyrion had made a comment during a feast about Lord Renly and his soulmate. It had largely been addressed at the hypocrisy of the Faith's maintaining that all such Marks between members of the same gender were chaste. Unfortunately that was not what it became when the gossips of the court got it in their grubby little hands and then expanded upon it. Lord Renly's dislike of the half-man had been cemented in place since.

 

Worse, the situation had recently been exacerbated. Jon had already sent his own squire home for being part of the prank. The fact remained, however, that the Knight of Flowers had awoken the morning after his and Lord Renly's arrival at the Red Keep to look at his armor stand only to find a small pillow hanging from the visor of his helm, as though bitten.

 

"How goes everything with the fleet?" Jon asked instead, hoping to derail the tension.

 

"We're short on sailors. It's not as bad as it was a few moons ago, and otherwise, we are doing well."

 

" _ Good _ ." Robert looked around, clearly growing impatient. His eyes fixed on Tyrion and he sat up straighter. "I heard about the attack on your caravan, Lannister.  _ That's _ what we should be talking about; the damned brigands. How many more pockets of them are there? Where the hell are they striking from? Verys, why haven't your little birds whispered anything to you about this for your King?"

 

"I'm afraid my little birds were as stricken by the Plague as any of the smallfolk." The Spider bowed in his seat, obsequious and nervous and actually managing to appear sad for the loss of his spies. "Nor have they ever roosted particularly well in the country. I can tell you all of the places they have struck, and where they are likely to strike again."

 

"Good." Robert said, then took a deep quaff of ale. "I'll send out a Kingsguard with a party of men. No,  _ two _ . Ser Arys Oakheart wants more responsibility. He can go out one way and the Kingslayer can go the other. Ser Jaime likes to boast of stopping the Kingswood Brotherhood with the Sword of the Morning? Then he can go live up to his boasting."

 

Jon breathed out. It wasn't the plan he'd wanted. It was, however, a plan and he doubted Robert would be moved on it with Ned nodding beside him approvingly. It would do. Jon prepared to open a discussion of the Crown's finances and what would be necessary to somehow get them under control after the tourney Robert had insisted on. Before he could speak, however, Robert went on.

 

"We need to talk about the succession."

 

Jon was quite happy that he'd opted not to drink anything. Lord Tyrion choked loudly on his wine and every other set of eyes at the table focused on the King. Jon felt his heart rate speed up as if going to battle. Those were words that badly needed to be spoken, but in private. Too much danger lay in those waters, and Robert should have known better than to just bring it up.

 

"Until such a time as the Queen provides Us another Heir." And Robert glowered as he said those words. "The Lady Shireen is next in line behind the Crown Prince. With the brigands on the road and out in the Riverlands, and Our son's journey west being what it is, I want that written. The Iron Throne goes to the Lady Shireen if, for some reason, it doesn't fall to my Heir, the Prince Joffrey."

 

Relief flooded through Jon even as a crier inside his skull began to shout fire. He could see from Lord Tyrion's eyes that Lord Tywin would hear of this without delay. It was too immediate a concern for the Lions for anything else to happen. Worse, he'd never been able to prove anything, but Jon felt sure that Pycelle was Cersei's creature. He'd run straight to the Queen and the results would be some other great public show of division within the Crown. Or, perhaps worse, another grand private fight. This one possibly bad enough that even Robert's desperation for more Heirs wouldn't be sufficient to move him to continue taking the Queen to bed.

 

Lord Renly, at least, looked pleased. Jon knew that the man had pitied his niece once, but been disturbed by her old greyscale scars such that he was far from close to the child. With Ser Davos having brought her to Storm's End during the worst of the Plague, that had changed. Immune to the Plague thanks to having survived greyscale, she'd been who'd nursed Lord Renly's soulmate through his own struggle with the illness. Now, though Robert ignored it as he often did his youngest brother, Lord Renly had something of a tightly knit family for the first time in his life.

 

"I won't speak of Joffrey." Robert went on, his expression tense. "Ned, I don't blame you for wanting to keep your redheaded girl close, either, since you've lost two other daughters to Dorne, of all the wretched places."

 

Robert's hostile reaction to the knowledge that the Princess Lyarra was with child, Jon reflected, had done them no favors. The Dornish were understandably paranoid and had nearly sent their entire female retinue, the Princess included, on to Dorne after the Princess had swooned at the party. Only the disruption of Prince Viserys' body arriving had stopped that plan. Jon was exhausted just thinking of all of the dangerous reasons why that being a trigger for a change in plans on the Viper's part worried him.

 

"You've other children, though. What about your younger boy, Bran, for my niece Shireen? You've already said he can make a knight of himself. Why not make a match of it between them? Jon could get his Knight of the Bloody Gate back. You know you complained of losing Ser Brynden, Jon. Ned, your boy could finish his growing where I grew up, and Shireen could have a real man in her life, even if he's got some growing to do."

 

Jon closed his eyes in plain as Renly's face went white with rage.

 

"And just what do you mean by a  _ real _ man?" Renly demanded.

 

"I don't mean anything by it, Renly, calm down." Robert turned to glare at his brother, his expression impatient. "But you  _ know _ how it is. How people  _ see _ it. Ned's boy won't have to deal with any of that and it'll please the banners."

 

"Your Grace, I remind you that Shireen is  _ my _ ward and  _ my _ Heir. We've agreed upon it. You put your seal upon the documents that made it so more than a year ago."

 

"Well, of course I did! It's not as if you're about to have one of your  _ own _ , pretty as Ser Loras may be!" Robert began to raise his voice, his face flushing as his temper flared in response to his brother's. "The girl's got to get married. Have you some complaint about it being Ned's son? I thought not!"

 

"It is largely a moot point." Ned raised his voice, his expression apologetic. "Robert, I'm already discussing a betrothal for Bran with Howland Reed. His daughter and Bran are much of an age too."

 

"Well, if you're just discussing it, then nothing's set in stone." Robert looked affronted. "And the Crannogman's a good enough fellow, honest, I'll give you that. There's just no fight in them, Ned. They hide up in their swamps and ambush people. Our Houses are meant to be joined. Would have been if not for…"

 

"I know." Ned agreed. "It's been much on my mind… and if things were different, well, Sansa's always wanted to marry south."

 

Ned stumbled over an attempt not to directly say that Prince Joffrey was Aerys writ small. Robert's temper deflated with a wince. He, as well as everyone else in the room, knew what was being thought. Either Ned had given no thought to a royal betrothal in any way, or he'd assumed it would be with his eldest trueborn girl and the rightful heir. Now, however, there was no way in any of the seven hells even a slightly responsible man would betroth his daughter to Joffrey. Even Lord Tarly had quietly made it clear that he was looking for other matches for his young daughters.

 

"Yes… you've the right of it there." Robert admitted, then another thought struck him, his lips twitching. "And Cat's not much older than the Queen. There's time yet for our children to make a match of it. You certainly aren't spoiled for choice, Ned."

 

"I'd prefer to give them time to become used to any match, anyway." Ned agreed.

 

"Let everyone see what they're getting before they get into it. Yes, you've said." Robert snorted and threw a look over at Tyrion and then a small gilded lion statue sitting in the corner of the chamber. His expression was one of disgust. "Dammit, Ned, why do you always have to be right?"

 

Ned merely looked uncomfortable at that, and the King heaved himself up out of his seat.

 

"Enough of this talking. I'll go organize an end to the brigands. If the Kingsguard can't handle it by the time the tourney is over, then the King will."

 

And, Jon reflected, just like that the meeting was adjourned. He would speak to Renly immediately and attempt to smooth feathers. It would do little good as he was sensitive to his brother's disapproval and discomfort over his Marked status. It would do less good where the Lady Shireen was concerned, for the little family Renly had found for himself had proven far more enduring than the fond, but weak, feelings of brothership he and the King shared. If anything, Jon had watched with a certain pride as the young lord grew so fond and protective of the quiet little girl.

 

The problem was he feared where it would lead here.  _ Ours is the Fury _ was the personal motto of House Baratheon. As pleasant as he usually was, it was impossible to miss the fact that this had roused that temper in Lord Renly. If it wasn't redirected there would be further royal quarreling, and who knew where that would lead?

 

There was also the Lannisters to consider. Lord Tyrion would be a refreshing breath of air, if he were the only Lannister Jon had to deal with. This Small Council meeting would end with him facing altogether too many of them, Jon was sure of it. Lord Tywin would be grim and displeased by what he saw as disrespect towards his family and all he had given the Crown. He would, however, at least bow to the necessity of further Heirs. Jon was fearful that the Queen would put her own pride before that, and she'd ever tried to resist and refuse her husband. That Robert wouldn't allow it was both something Jon understood and something that caused him unease.

 

* * *

" _ Yes _ , I  _ know  _ what you think of it, Uncle!" Oberyn hissed and stepped away from where Lord Gargalen's gaze was boring a hole into the side of his head as soon as he entered the guest solar.

 

The Lord's cane, which had just applied itself firmly to Oberyn's shins, hit the floor with a loud  _ clack _ .

 

"Of all of the foolish, ignorant, childish,  _ reactionary- _ ."

 

"That is a great many adjectives, Uncle."

 

" _ -thickheaded _ displays I have seen!" Lord Gargalen finished as though he had not been interrupted. "Oberyn, your Princess is carrying your child. You are Marked and have been wed less than four moons. What were you thinking to allow the  _ Kingslayer _ to bait you into anything?"

 

"I allowed him to bait me not at all. While I may have enjoyed forcing others to guess on the matter, I have been planning on riding in the tourney since it was first brought to my attention by Ser Domeric." Oberyn argued hotly. "And, need I remind you, that prancing golden imbecile sat on an ill-gotten throne with his own king dead at his feet and did  _ nothing _ while Elia and her babes were despoiled and slaughtered? He was the only Kingsguard in the entire Red Keep, and that was where he chose to be while his father sacked the place and the royal family was murdered."

 

"As a lad of six-and-ten, and as no-one can be in two places at once, I think your own words could explain why he was not able to save them."

 

"Had he even tried to save them, then he would not infuriate me so." Oberyn shot back, then paused as honesty compelled him to go on. "No, I think I would hate him regardless. I just wouldn't wish him so very dead as I do now."

 

"A fine distinction." Lord Gargalen lowered himself into a chair. "One that will not save Lyarra from miscarriage if you are badly injured, or death if you break your fool neck."

 

"Have more faith in me than that, Uncle." Oberyn replied stiffly, but couldn't help a slight feeling of unease before breathing out. "You've seen me on the lists."

 

"And the melee?" Lord Gargalen frowned. "You have not participated in a melee nearly so often, Oberyn."

 

"You doubt me?"

 

"I doubt that the Lannisters might not find it convenient to pay a number of men even you can't best to turn on you at once in the chaos." Lord Gargalen sighed, and the lines in his face seemed to etch themselves deeper as his nephew watched him sink fully back into his chair. " _ Oberyn _ , permit an old man his worries. I love you and your brother dearly, and if Doran is left as the last of my brother's children, I fear he will not be so for long. Quentyn is a good lad, but he's too untested to rule. If Quentyn does not return from Essos, then there is only Trystane and your daughters. Don't let your impetuousness doom your House."

 

Oberyn sat back, his temper having cooled somewhat and nodded.

 

"I will not, Uncle." He assured him. "I shall only join the melee if that creature who murdered Rhaenys is doing the same, and then I need not win, only see him dead."

 

"Accidents are one thing, Oberyn. Your family can shield you from that. Open murder on the field is another when the King already hates you so well."

 

"It is not open murder if Amory Lorch dies three days later of a terrible fever and painful convulsions."

 

"True, though everyone will know." Lord Gargalen considered it. "As long as they can prove nothing, there will be no outcry. If he's truly out of favor with the Lions, then little care would be given. Still, were it to be settled more privately, it would be better. There would be less risk."

 

"Why do you think I've cultivated eyes amongst the smallfolk?" Oberyn asked as he rose and went over to a sideboard. "Wine, Uncle?"

 

Lord Gargalen gestured the affirmative, encouraging that his nephew pour generously. Oberyn came back with two goblets. Then, once they were both taken a deep draught, he continued speaking.

 

"I've got more than one friend amidst those knights who have already settled their pavilions down by the tourney grounds along with the grateful commons of King's Landing keeping their eyes open. For which, I might add, you should thank Lyarra. When Amory Lorch arrives, the Stranger will stalk him in my skin, Uncle."

 

"And I would thank your wife for that, why?"

 

"Because." Oberyn looked amused. "When riding into the city and receiving their adulation, it was Lyarra who spoke with them and recalled quite a few names. A cabbage merchant in particular followed us from gate to gate and held some conversation with her. Finding her quite friendly, he was less hesitant to approach me when I was out with Lady Arya. It turns out the grocer in question deals in all sorts of vegetables, carting them about the city, and sees much."

 

"Ah." Lord Gargallen thought that over, then went on. "And if Amory Lorch does not arrive? A household knight out of favor with his Lord Paramount might well not have the funds to journey to a tourney across two kingdoms."

 

"Then I will have to attend to him wherever the cursed beast sleeps." Oberyn sat back, with a low breath. "The Lady Gwyn has given me no more names. Elia's killer, and Aegon's, remains unknown to us."

 

"True, though I would not pressure the child. She has spent her time well, and Ulwyck with her, trying to gather tales of the King's debts to the Lannisters. Shaking what fragile confidence she's now found would be unwise."

 

"Nor do I intend to." He shot his uncle a glare. "Have you made any progress on that front? The Lady Gwyn's efforts are more tailored to tales of rumor carried by servants. Finding out matters of funds and such are more in our hands, as we have access to the higher gossip of the court."

 

"With Lord Arryn's Master of Coin having left two days ago for the Vale, I am left with Lord Tywin's own son as the most likely source of information." Lord Gargalen replied darkly, then sighed. "Whatever else is said of him, the Imp of the Rock is not a fool. Even subtle interest was noted, and I will make no progress there. In fact, I have had very unfortunate news."

 

"What?"

 

Oberyn learned of the brigand attack, heard of the fact that Ser Jaime would likely miss the tourney he'd goaded Oberyn into participating in entirely to hunt brigands, and that the Crown's books had just gone up in smoke. Rubbing at his face, he tried to look for some benefit.

 

"The Usurper is now at the mercy of the Iron Bank as well as his wife's kin."

 

"Indeed. Without his own books, he will have to take their word for it."

 

"Still… If we are to drive a wedge between the Miner's Guild and Casterly Rock, we will need that information. I have let it be known that I am offering help and a better situation to any of the late Lord Baelish's people should they have information." Oberyn finally allowed. "If-."

 

"The Princess Lyarra!" One of their guards announced at the door.

 

Lyarra's entrance with her sister, father, her two ladies-in-waiting, and several guards that excused themselves to other duties and locations from the other side of the door precluded further talk. He immediately walked over to steal a kiss from Lyarra and curl a hand over her belly to greet his ninth daughter. He grinned at Arya when he saw that the ridiculously young girl he'd ended up with as a goodsister was holding a bowl of shelled walnuts out at Lyarra as if it was a weapon.

 

"She didn't have  _ anything _ to eat after breakfast, Prince Oberyn, even though Gwyn and Walda brought things for her."

 

"Very good, Lady Arya, the intelligence you provide is faultless." He complimented her and bent over nearly double to buss her on the cheek, grinning when she cringed and wiped the dry kiss away with her shirt sleeve. "Your attention to your duty is commendable. How are you feeling, Wife?"

 

"I'm entirely fine, Husband." Lyarra said dryly and went over to sit by Oberyn's uncle. "Lord Gargalen, are you well? Lady Jynessa mentioned this morning that your knee was bothering you."

 

"Merely age and the number of stairs in this Keep. It's  _ you _ I wish to hear of, and the little one you carry."

 

Oberyn felt something in his chest lighten, and then glow a bit at the unabashed delight radiating from his uncle. Lord Gargalen reacted that way to every addition of the family, whether it was meeting awkward Obara for the first time or cradling Trystane against his chest and proclaiming his happiness. It was the same unabashed love that Oberyn had always been shown, even when he knew his uncle was about to take him over a knee for this or that offense.

 

"Now," Lord Gargalen went on, shooting Oberyn a mock-cross look, "As my nephew was so  _ unforgivably _ remiss in letting me find out about this little one with the rest of the court, calm an old man's fears. Tell me how you feel, and leave nothing out. Remember, you are Marked by the Gods to give Dorne great children. We're all interested in every detail."

 

Lyarra looked rather nervous about that and Oberyn hid a grin. When she'd realized the truth of that statement not a day before, his wife had been somewhat alarmed. She was more private than he was, Oberyn had already found out in the most dramatic possible way, and not used to sharing things. Nor did the mockery she experienced as a bastard encourage it in any way. Now she was having to relearn things, including how to share something as special and as personal as carrying a child.

 

Going over to lean against the back of her chair and card his fingers through her hair, Oberyn snagged Arya's bowl on the way over and settled it on the arm of the chair where they could both take advantage of it. He'd skipped breakfast in favor of time in the sparring yard. It took a certain force of will not to eat all of it himself, but all it took was the memory of Lyarra collapsing in that fat, drunk oaf's arms to quiet it.

 

"I'm fine, and so is the babe." Lyarra insisted. "I got a little lightheaded climbing the stairs to the library, but it settled as soon as I sat down for a bit. Arya's also wrong, I  _ did _ eat something."

 

"A handful of grapes does not count." Arya declared mulishly.

 

Lyarra shot a narrow-eyed look at Gwyn. Gwyn returned a look of the utmost innocence. Walda winked at Arya behind both of their backs as she went about putting away Lyarra's lap desk.

 

"I see that I have obviously chosen the right Stark for this job." Oberyn observed, just to see the wild she-wolf grin at him. "If you ever wish to get out of those tiresome dancing lessons your father foisted off on you, consider you have my permission."

 

"Oh, no, I  _ like _ my dancing lessons." Arya told him, and Oberyn's eyes narrowed at her playful tone before Gwyn distracted them all.

 

"Lyarra, if you want to be ready for tea with the Tyrells we need to leave in the next half-hour, and you should wash up and change. Your day dress is fine for reading, but it's not proper for a meal with a Dowager Lady Paramount."

 

"You're having tea with the Queen of Thorns?"

 

"Yes, do you think this tea will actually feature tea or just be another excuse to drink wine and insult people?" Lyarra asked in exasperation and Oberyn chuckled.

 

"The Tyrells are famous for the teas produced in Highgarden." Oberyn reassured her. "There will be a variety available, and they will all be delightful. As likely will be the insults."

 

Lyarra perked up visibly as did Gwyn. Walda just looked a bit nervous.

 

"Will we have time for tea and then to get ready for the feast? The King's made a big deal of this one. There will be none tomorrow as everyone will be getting ready for the tourney, and supposedly something of merit is to be announced."

 

"At least we know it's not a betrothal." Oberyn observed and Lyarra wilted in relief against her chair. "Lyarra?"

 

"Lady Catelyn wrote back, she wrote father as well, and I spoke to him this morning." Lyarra agreed. "Sansa's safe from that - from Prince Joffrey."

 

Oberyn shot his uncle a sideways look. Neither had believed that Lord Stark would sell any of his children to a madman, even one who acted as if he was all but in diapers. Perhaps especially one who was as immature as he was cruel. It was still nice to hear that there would not be a counter alliance against the one forged by his marriage. Especially not when it seemed that the chances of Lord Stark willingly supporting Joffrey Baratheon's reign were so low.

 

The Usurper, of course, remained a problem. He was also a lush who drank heavily, ate too much, and whored indiscriminately. Accidents happened every day to such men, and when they didn't, the human heart could only take so much.

 

"A relief to anyone with half a heart, my dear." Lord Gargalen agreed gently. "Still, I believe your ladies are right. One should not keep Lady Olenna Tyrell waiting."

 

"Indeed, I shall make ready as well." Oberyn stood up to a series of surprised expressions from all of the ladies and an amused look of reprobation from his uncle.

 

"You're inviting yourself to someone else's tea, Oberyn?"

 

"Of course, and I guarantee you that Lady Olenna will be delighted by my appearance there."

 

"Why?" Arya wanted to know.

 

"Because, Arya, Lady Olenna and I are very similar sorts of people." Oberyn flashed fang in his smile. "And I am ever happy when someone I hate drops in at my table."

 

* * *

"Prince Oberyn, what a  _ delightful _ surprise." Lady Olenna deadpanned while more than a little amused at the man's endless gall.

 

It was a pity that the Martells were politically untouchable. Just as it was a pity that House Tyrell owed the man for having lost none of its own to the Plague and for having enough in the way of plague goats to both quiet the smallfolk and to assure that those Houses loyal to them carried on. If disloyal Houses didn't get the inoculation quite as fast, well, blame the topography. Tricky things, hills and rivers were.

 

"I thought so myself when I was planning it, my lady." She permitted him to kiss her hand as he drew back a chair for his young wife.

 

The girl, at least, looked a bit nervous. Lady Olenna took it as a sign that the child wasn't without wits, as many beauties were. She lacked polish, and the bastardry showed under her new jewels and pretty gowns, but the girl's eyes were more than luminous. They were watchful and intelligent.

 

"Well, get on with it." She gestured as she sat down again now that the Prince and Princess had arrived and were seated. "Or don't. We all know who we are, after all. Save for these two ladies."

 

"Lady Olenna Tyrell, may I introduce to you Lady Gwyn Parren and Lady Walda Frey, mine wife's ladies-in-waiting?"

 

"You just did." Olenna drawled and took a moment to just look over her guests.

 

Oberyn Martell was as he ever was. Tall, handsome, dark, and dangerous with a nice gloss of hedonism over all of it as garnish; the Red Viper never changed. He was ever as he'd been when he'd crippled her grandson, Willas, and she would resent him for that till the day he died. Willas, who out of all of Mace's children showed so much promise and wouldn't need to wed anyone to realize it.

 

Ah, well… Olenna decided that, if nothing else, the unwanted friendship Willas had decided to develop with the man out of spleen had seen dividends. She could accept it. The young were right to have their own plans and ambitions, and while she'd spent a lifetime loathing the Dornish, she could finally see Willas' point. The Usurper's name was rubbish amongst the smallfolk and the Martells were on the rise. Roses needed good ground to grow, and just the right amount of sun. It was her turn to encourage that as well as go fishing for a little information. One could never know too much.

 

At least until one did.

 

"You've the Lannister look about you, Lady Gwyn." Lady Olenna observed. "I applaud you for your accomplishments. I wouldn't think a lady of such appearance could remain unscathed so long in the company you're keeping."

 

The girl looked quite pretty in a simple linen cotehardie of burgundy. If Lady Olenna wasn't mistaken, she'd grow fairer as she aged and the bit of baby fat clinging to her face melted away. The sideless surcoat she wore with it was a bit out of fashion for the capital, but suited her well in its mustard yellow shade. The black lion embroidered on the front was beaded and built up in the Westerland's style as well. Seeing someone so unashamedly western amongst the Dornish was a shock, and a curiosity.

 

"It's always a surprise what people find they have in common if they just talk to one other, don't you think, Lady Olenna?" The girl said instead as Olenna gestured for her serving girl to step forward.

 

"An interesting point of view." Olenna allowed, curious as to precisely what a Lannister looking girl from House Parren might have in common with the Red Viper, not to mention the way his eyes sharpened as she said so.

 

A few moments were lost to choosing teas and pouring them. Olenna found herself drawn into giving a bit of advice as well. Mace hadn't been kind to her as far as keeping her head on straight, either. She'd spent most of that pregnancy swooning and look what she'd gotten out of it! She couldn't quite help advising the girl, given how young Lyarra the Once Bastard was. 

 

Marked marriages often happened too soon, in her opinion. Wedding at flowering was something she found distasteful, if occasionally politically expedient. She couldn't resist stirring the pot a bit with that as well.

 

"I found it interesting that you were married so  _ quickly _ ." Lady Olenna commented as she sipped her tea and slid a lemon cake across the table. "Eat something, dear, the King's not feasting us until after sunset and you'll keel over if you don't keep a little something in your belly all the time. Trust me; my first and third pregnancies were horrors."

 

"We weren't married that soon; it was half-a-year from my Mark's appearing until I was wed." Lyarra offered, but her silk-grained, pale skin turned a greenish color as her eyes fixed on the latter of yellow cakes. "I, um, no thank you."

 

"Ah." Olenna nodded sympathetically and gestured for a servant to take them away. "Bring us out some light toast, thinly sliced, and jam. A  _ variety _ of jam, mind you, don't bring me out a lake-sized bowl of one kind of the stuff like last time."

 

The servant bowed deeply and scurried off with the lemon cakes.

 

"A half-year's not so long, Princess." Lady Olenna raised an eyebrow and sipped her tea. "I've heard that in Dorne, betrothals were arranged for younger soulmates so they could live together, but not as man and wife."

 

Olenna was pleased to note that the young princess looked surprised by that. Prince Oberyn looked both uncomfortable and vexed. Then he just looked annoyed when the Lady Gwyn looked up from her tea cup to add her own opinion to the venture.

 

"Princess Lyarra is rather young, but the Prince most certainly is not getting younger."

 

"Lady Gwyn, correct me if I am in error, but your name is not Arya Stark, is it?"

 

"She's with us in spirit."

 

Lady Walda, who was a sweet little thing if far too plump for the fashionable, pretended to cough to hide a squeaky laugh. Olenna didn't even pretend not to laugh. Why would she?

 

"A good point." She turned to the Princess. "Might as well get some use out of him while he's still good for something."

 

The Princess was fighting between a fierce blush, no doubt a crippling gift from her Northern heritage, and obvious amusement. Olenna took a moment to just examine the girl. She looked pretty enough in an ice blue dress designed with long, trailing sleeves and a short train. Blue morning glory vines were embroidered all around the hem and the modest neck.

 

She was beautiful. Olenna took a moment to admire her cheekbones and the straightness of her nose. Her lips were too full to be normal for Northern blood, and her features too refined. The long face, the solemn brow, the graceful neck; these things were Northern. In fact, her whole look was Northern, but as though some other blood had come in and polished it. From what Olenna recalled of the wolf-maid the King was still fixated on, the Lady Lyarra was her image, but  _ perfected _ rather than truly restored. That would only appeal more to the man's rewritten memories, though, wouldn't it? No wonder the Fat King was making more of a fool of himself than usual.

 

Still, looking at Princess Lyarra Martell, once Stark, and Snow before that? Looking at her, Olenna decided she could give some credence to those rumors about Ashara Dayne. Some insisted it was Brandon Stark who'd caught her eye, and Olenna found her mind leaning that direction as well. Her hair was darker than Ned Stark's, and her eyes wider and rounder in shape. It would also explain Stark's hesitance to speak of her origins. Eddard Stark was a  _ second _ son, and though a girl shouldn't inherit first in the North under any circumstances, if she was the  _ sole _ issue of the rightful Heir, it would create problems. Disloyal and ambitious bannermen would have turned their eyes towards Brandon Stark's daughter quickly, and then Winterfell thereafter.

 

Not quite satisfied with this theory, but willing to keep it in mind, Olenna turned herself to other business. She wanted to plum the girl for information. While having the Viper there would make it more difficult, as he was obviously there to protect his inexperienced bride, it wasn't impossible. Or it wouldn't have been, she reflected in annoyance, if it hadn't been for all the help Olenna found herself receiving from her very own family.

 

"Mother?"

 

It would be Mace. Her dear oaf of a son. Who she almost wished she didn't love as well as she did. Honestly, _that_ _boy…_

 

"Mother, there you are! I was just -  _ oh _ ." Mace Tyrell walked around the corner of the hedges boxing in the section of the garden Olenna had chosen for her own tea party and stopped to bow. "Forgive me, Princess Lyarra, I don't mean to intrude, but-," Then he caught sight of the snake. "Prince Oberyn."

 

The Viper looked as vexed as she did. Then again, though Willas hadn't shared it with her, she was aware of the reason why. He held  _ Mace _ responsible for Willas' injury. As if Mace had wanted his Heir crippled. Not that Olenna had any illusions about him pushing her grandson onto the lists too soon, but a man as accomplished as Prince Oberyn should have damned well taken that into account and been careful with her grandson.

 

"Lord Tyrell. A pleasure, as always, I'm sure." His response was as dry as the deserts.

 

"Well, yes."

 

Mace's enthusiasm was as estatic as his wince before as he offered a better smile to Olenna's guests. If only Margaery was here. Then Olenna could depute her to keep the Viper occupied, throw Mace at the two ladies, and concentrate on the princess. Not that Margaery should be with them. Olenna had heard things before they left Highgarden about what the Crown Prince was getting up to with his mother too deep in mourning for her other children and his father too deep in his cups and a collapsing reign to watch the boy. No, they needed to make further alliances in the Reach to stabilize their rule anyway. Best to leave Margaery firmly at home, where it was safe, while her future was resolved in more prudent directions.

 

"You look lovely, Princess. And the Lady Gwyn and Lady Walda as well." Mace went on in his attempt at chivalry. "I think the southern sun suits you very well."

 

"Considering how much of it she's soon to be getting, I'm sure that's a relief to everyone." Olenna drawled. "I-."

 

"Grandmother, look who wanted to say, 'hello'- _ oh _ …"

 

Olenna let out a deep breath and quickly schooled her features into gentleness. Not for Loras' benefit, as Loras ought to have known better than to interrupt her. Seeing signs of newly dried tears on the plain, but no longer disfigured, face of Lady Shireen Baratheon was enough to move even Olenna's hardened old heart. The girl was but eight years old, and her life had not been easy.

 

"It is always a pleasure to have another lady at tea." Olenna said instead and patted the chair beside her she'd had her cane resting on, removing it as she gestured. "Come here, Shireen, and let me see your dress. My eyes aren't what they used to be, and I like that shade of blue."

 

Shyly, Shireen came over. Prince Oberyn hid a snort in a false sneeze at Olenna's claim of being slightly blind. She ignored him and concentrated on putting the girl at ease. By the time the toast and jam arrived a moment or two later, Shireen's shy smile had returned. If she was also turning the carved wooden stag toy she loved so much over and over in her hands, that was fine too. The Onion Knight may have been common, but the man had that uncommon thing known of as _ common sense _ . One did not waste useful bannermen.

 

Princess Lyarra rose in Olenna's esteem as she gave up twisting the truly enormous ruby ring on her finger and turned her attention to Shireen instead. While the Princess was gently drawing the girl out, Olenna turned to Loras. Mace she didn't have to worry about, as he'd turned his questionable charm on saying nice things to the fat Frey girl. Who, in turn, was happy enough to have someone being nice to her that she was being just as mindlessly kind back. If Olenna wasn't mistaken, however, the little blonde Parren girl was watching everything. Nice to see some intelligence in the youth.

 

"The Queen." Loras mouthed, tipping his head towards Shireen and then sliding forward to give his grandmother a kiss on the cheek. "Grandmother, I wanted to-."

 

" _ Loras _ ?"

 

"Keeping up with the general theme of life itself, there is to be no peace for the ladies." Olenna observed dryly and picked up a cut crystal decanter to add a nice dash of something strong to her tea. "I won't bother asking  _ you _ , Princess, but would anyone else?"

 

"Yes,  _ please _ , Mother." Mace answered eagerly, pushing his cup over. She was tempted to refuse him when he added. "I just spent the better part of the morning in conversation with Randyll Tarly, and the last hour with Tarly and Lord Stark… Begging your pardon, Princess, but the details of weirwood care and planting were not something I'd planned to spend my morning on."

 

"Of course, Lord Tyrell."

 

At least, Olenna reflected, the girl did genuine graciousness well. That would help her out. Olenna thought about losing an hour to the company of two men as boring, if as useful, as Eddard Stark and Randyll Tarly and made sure to give her son a generous dollop of the liquor as well. When the Red Viper pushed his cup forward, she shot him a look. He responded with one word.

 

"Kingslayer."

 

Olenna gave him a small nip, just to be passingly polite. After all, the arrogant golden lion was annoying. He was also quite pleasant to look at, but that hardly made up for having to speak to the Kingsguard's most infamous member.

 

"Loras, your squire said that you were in the gardens, and-." Renly Baratheon, who'd called out her grandson's name a moment before, stepped into the small clearing. "Oh, Lady Olenna, please forgive the intrusion."

 

"Just sit down, your lordship." Olenna huffed and turned back to the Princess. "As I was saying. We obviously won't be getting any peace. We might as well find out what the fuss is about. Mace, you interrupted first. I trust all goes well with the Old Faith's effortless return to grace?"

 

"Well, yes." Mace Tyrell agreed with a sigh as he slathered a piece of toast in jam. "No lemoncakes, Mother?"

 

"I'm afraid my newester daughter has apparently taken an early dislike to them." Oberyn Martell drawled and, to Olenna's pleased surprise, her son showed decent understanding by shooting the Princess a compassionate look after the requisite glare at her husband.

 

"Oh,  _ yes _ , I remember those days well." Mace agreed. "Alerie couldn't  _ stand _ the smell of plums. It always varied a little bit with each babe, but plums were right out. I knew I was going to be a father again whenever she looked at a plate of plums and had to run for the nearest basin, poor love."

 

The Viper had slid an arm around his young wife's shoulders, but his only response was that silent support. If anything, she relaxed a bit and smiled back. Shireen gained enough courage to lean forward and contribute as well.

 

"Mother never had a specific food that bothered her. She was just ill." Shireen offered. "I bet it just means that your baby has strong tastes. I don't like crab at  _ all _ , but shrimp is nice. I really like oysters, too, but they're best raw and you shouldn't eat raw meat while with child. I read it in a book Maester Ruark wrote."

 

"I've read his book on treating war wounds. He was Jaehaerys the Wise's Grand Maester, if I recall?" Lyarra smiled and Shireen nodded.

 

"If this book is that informative on carrying women, I shall have to procure a copy." The Red Viper commented, though his eyes were on where Renly and Loras had moved slightly to the side and were talking in low, harsh voices. "My daughter, Sarella, loves to read. Perhaps even more than my Princess does. Do you perhaps count yourself amongst them, Lady Shireen?"

 

The little girl grinned and nodded, going shy again at the teasing, warm tone of the man's voice.

 

"He didn't!" Loras' furious hiss distracted everyone and Olenna vowed to have a talk with that boy.

 

Fights were  _ not _ to be conducted in public. Neither were friendlier exchanges. Nor did one ever prosper by airing information in front of everyone when it was best hoarded.

 

"He did." Renly agreed grimly, then turned, proving that at least this display wasn't accidental. "Prince Oberyn, Princess Lyarra, Lord Tyrell, Lady Olenna, Shireen and company. I have to beg you to forgive my uncouth behavior, but I'm afraid I am… severely  _ vexed _ at the moment."

 

"Mayhaps some tea and discussion will help settle that?" Olenna watched in amusement as the Stormlord produced a large bottle of good red strongwine from the Arbor instead.

 

"I came prepared, however, I am willing to share if anyone should desire?" The man turned and showed a leather shoulder bag containing two more bottles. "You'll be delighted to know, Lady Tyrell, that I've taken your advice of consideration and planning in regards to my decisions to heart, I hope."

 

Olenna let out a short bark of laughter, surprised and pleased at the sally. A moment later they were all seated. The servants had the brains to procure extra chairs when they saw how things had turned out, and soon the clearing was filled. Wine was distributed and the toast and jam added to by the addition of some fresh fruit and a variety of cheeses.

 

"You'll all hear soon anyway, so I'll just have out with it." Lord Renly stated. "Officially I've given up my seat on the Small Council to better spend my time concentrating on the needs of my people in the Stormlands."

 

"And  _ unofficially _ ?" The Viper beat her to asking.

 

" _ Unofficially _ , Prince Oberyn, my brother and I got into a fight over him attempting to arrange a betrothal for Shireen without my knowledge or approval." Renly spat out and beside him Loras curled an arm around the suddenly frightened looking girl's shoulders.

 

"Don't worry about it. Uncle Renly stood up to the _King_ _himself_ for you!" Loras assured her, smiling. "You're Renly's heir and Storm's End is your home and your inheritance and no-one is taking you away from us."

 

Tears rose in the little girl's eyes, but she nodded firmly and steadied herself. Lady Lyarra herself looked much moved by the reassurance. If Olenna wasn't much mistaken, she even caught a hint of respect in the Red Viper's eyes. A rare and gratifying thing, for all that Olenna was still regretful that she'd had to put her revenge on hold in the name of political expediency and a blood debt involving diseased goats of all the rubbish.

 

"Who is to take your seat as Master of Laws?" Mace asked, his eyes openly calculating and no doubt hoping for that honor himself.

 

"Who else but the most  _ capable _ man in the Seven Kingdoms and the King's own goodfather? No doubt Lord Tywin will quickly set all of the corruption and disorganization of the City Watch and the lack of magistrates to rights." Renly snorted and bit aggressively into a piece of sharp cheese, then chewed with feeling. "Of course, it is a bit of a  _ demotion _ , but he can hardly claim Lord Arryn's job while the Old Falcon still sits in his chair, can he?"

 

"Oh, assuredly." Oberyn Martell agreed. "Lord Tywin won't be the Hand again while Jon Arryn lives."

 

"Which will hopefully be for a very long time considering the state of the succession in the Vale." Olenna added, able to see precisely what the Viper was saying and not disagreeing with it, but deciding to take a different tack. "If Lord Tywin is going to be staying in the city, whatever shall become of the Crown Prince's trip to Casterly Rock?"

 

"Mine nephew, the Prince Joffrey, is still going to Casterly Rock." Renly helpfully clarified in an exhausted tone of voice. "For which I'm glad. Kevan Lannister's a lot of things, but he's a solid man, and less likely to try and bog the boy down with too much time with a Maester. Hopefully he'll grind some sense of decency into the Prince."

 

"You're undisturbed that the Queen's family has such an influence on the Prince?" Princess Lyarra asked, her expression genuinely concerned.

 

_ "Not subtle, but she wins points for harmless earnesty."  _ Olenna observed under her breath, making sure the Viper caught it. He tipped his head and she smirked.

 

"Frankly, I'm just glad that he didn't foist him off on  _ me _ ." Renly answered as he took another hearty draft of the wine; he was drinking directly from the bottle he'd first raised. "We'll stay for the tourney, but then it's  _ directly _ back home. Ser Davos is taking the bulk of the luggage back on his ship, but we'll ride.  _ Dammit _ , Shireen, you'll need a proper palfrey. I'd meant it to be a surprise, and I've been shopping but I mislike the ones I've seen so far. If we're to leave in four days, I shall have to purchase one regardless."

 

"I'll write to Willas, he'll send the most beautiful palfrey in his stables." Loras reassured him. "He's already sent up some stock for sale at the tourney fair."

 

"If he sends it up, it won't be here nearly in time." Lord Renly shot back in an annoyed tone.

 

Shireen's eyes widened and Olenna watched in surprise and approval as Shireen caught Loras' gaze. Loras returned it and winked before nodding. Shireen then scooted forward in her chair.

 

"Uncle, do you have a headache?"

 

"What?" The Young Stag was surprised.

 

"You look like you have a headache. You're doing that thing where you get pinches between your eyebrows. Father used to do that when he ground his teeth, and it meant he had a headache."

 

"I-," Renly Baratheon reached up and touched the little line forming between his eyebrows. "No, I wouldn't - well, perhaps."

 

"Come, then, drinking in the bright sun will make it worse." Loras stood up. "You know what the Maester said."

 

"I  _ suppose _ ." The Lord Paramount looked reluctant.

 

"I could read to you?" Shireen offered. "Lord Willas sent me a new book with tales of Aemon the Dragonknight in it!"

 

Loras perked up and Renly even looked a little intrigued. Olenna watched in approval as the angry, slighted young lord was led off by his eight year old niece and Olenna's grandson. She approved wholeheartedly of the maneuver, and found that she couldn't even be annoyed at the young stag for foolishly giving this information out so freely. Being there to personally see the calculations going on in the Red Viper's eyes at the news was  _ quite _ worth the sacrifice.

 

* * *

"I'm not wearing that." Lyarra stared down at the long drape of silk in Gwyn's arms. "It's - Gwyn, that's barely a nightgown! I would be embarrassed to wear it in  _ bed _ !"

 

"It's normal fashion in Sunspear right now, Lyarra, I checked to make sure your husband wasn't just being awful when I saw the gowns he ordered you. You'll look  _ beautiful _ in it!"

 

"Lady Myria and Lady Jynessa don't wear things like that!"

 

"Lady Myria is too big busted to wear it. She needs the support of her stays. She gets away with making her own fashion because she's seduced half of the Dornish court. Lady Jynessa has  _ grandchildren _ , enough said." Gwyn rolled her eyes. "I asked a Dornish merchant about everything and it's all perfectly normal."

 

"I can't wear it!"

 

"That's what you said about cleavage at first, and now look how comfortable you are." Gwyn soothed. "That went fine, didn't it?"

 

"Everyone stared at me. Everyone  _ will _ stare at me!"

 

"Everyone's been staring at you since you were two-and-ten, you only started noticing it when your Mark came." Gwyn laid the gown, if it could be called that, out on the bed. "Lyarra, you're  _ the _ Dornish Princess. The  _ only one _ until Prince Quentyn weds. You can't just not dress as they do! It's  _ insulting _ ."

 

Lyarra paused, staring down at the clothing on the bed in a mix of horror and a kind of calculation that had been alien to her before her Mark had appeared. Before she'd never had to worry about offending people. Or, rather, she'd only ever had to worry about offending Lady Stark. She offended her by breathing. So it was just a matter of working hard to uphold her family's honor and remaining stoic in the face of the barbs that a life of bastardry threw at you.

But that soft internal voice had a place in her mind now. It had started with Gwyn talking to her more of courts and manners right after her Mark appeared. It had gained credibility as even Lady Stark had begun to speak to Lyarra of a wife's responsibilities. It had been cemented by the realities brought to her attention with her marriage and all of the things she'd been purposefully taught and simply gleaned as a reality of being Oberyn Martell's wife, unasked for or not.

 

"It would be." Lyarra admitted reluctantly, then bit her lip in thought. "If there's one thing the Dornish hate, I've found, it's the suggestion that there's something lewd or wrong about how they live their lives."

 

"In the North, my short-sleeved blouses were taken askance, or the fact that you can see my ankles." Gwyn agreed. "Remember how Lady Stark reacted when we used the potion to burn the hair from your legs so it wouldn't grow back?"

 

Lyarra winced. The potion Gwyn had made had stung. It had only done so once, however, and after the redness had faded from her skin, Lyarra had to admit that it worked. Lady Stark had been horrified to learn that Gwyn had learned to make the potion from a prostitute and then was willing to reuse it on herself and others. She'd prefer to endlessly continue ripping her hair out with hot wax, rather than condescend to anything used by whores and bastards. She had taught Sansa to do the same.

 

"Aye." Lyarra breathed and bit her lip, bracing herself and recalling her husband's words about looking up for his eyes, rather than looking down when any tried to intimidate or shame her. "I'm the Princess of House Martell."

 

"You are."

 

"Let's have the thing, then." Lyarra set her jaw and then poked her friend between the eyes. "No squealing, sighing, or commenting on how it makes my breasts or arse look."

 

Gwyn contented herself with a grin as smug as any well-fed cat's and accepted Lyarra's dressing gown to set aside. Lyarra accepted the little triangle of flesh colored cotton and lace with ribbons on the side that was her smallclothes and tied it at the sides to hold it in place. Next followed the first part of the dress, one Lyarra absolutely thought should have served as smallclothes. After that she accepted the gown itself, smoothing it into place and accepting Gwyn's help in getting it settled.

 

"Where's Walda?"

 

"You were only allotted three seats in this feast for your ladies. Lady Jynessa and Lady Myria certainly must go, and so Walda and I decided it would be better if I went. Arya wasn't invited, as there will be no children at this feast, and so she decided to take Nymeria and Ghost out to romp at the tourney field. It's empty now, and Jory Cassel is going with them and a lot of Northern Guards." Gwyn explained.

 

"As long as they're safe." Lyarra agreed, relieved. "Ghost and Nymeria have been too much inside. This will be good for them."

 

Gwyn agreed and Lyarra helped her finish dressing as well. It helped that her friend was also wearing a gown made in the Dornish style. Hers was simpler, which was to be expected in a gown constructed in just a few hours. Fortunately Dornish gowns apparently often lent themselves towards simpler designs.

 

"Ladies, may you favorite Prince enter or is he still barred from the bedchamber?"

 

"You may enter." Lyarra rolled her eyes. "You're the one who needed the dressing room. Do not blame  _ me _ for barring you from the bedchamber."

 

Lyarra's next sentence died on her tongue as she took in her husband. Lyarra's father had once told her that a man who could not command authority in any attire did not deserve to hold authority at all. Appearances were deceiving. Likewise, Gwyn had once told Lyarra that Oberyn could look the prince while falling on his ass. Lyarra was forced to agree, but added a codicil in her mind. When the Red Viper chose to play the part of prince, no one played it better.

 

He dressed sternly this time, not playfully or even merely regally. Lyarra felt a flare of helpless attraction and sensuality at the sight. She had been raised to respect and to admire stern men in dark clothing of forbidding mein. Her husband, normally one for brighter colors, wore it well.

 

His inner tunic was of a heavy coppery silk and bore no clasps and no fasteners. Instead it hung open from neck to where the sides had been draped over each other and tucked into the waist of his loose black trousers. These, in turn, had been tucked into a pair of high black boots that ended just below his knees.

 

Up each side of his trousers old, almost tarnished looking gold embroidery ran. It was a pattern of sunbursts framed in two lines of spears running vertically up the outside of each leg. His coat, like his other coats, was open with no fastenings to hold it closed. It carried down to to nearly his ankles this time, however, and the fine, dark, heavy damask of it was a mass of twisted, thorn-covered vines in matte and glossy silk. More of the same old gold thread had been used to heavily embroider sunbursts at even, but random seeming intervals all over the coat.

 

Wound over one black shoulder and then through the elbow of his opposite arm was a long, trailing, rectangular shawl he'd bunched up into a line of metallic copper and bright gold silk. Thin as fog, the shawl would have been translucent if spread. Instead it was a river of molten sunlight gleaming across the black of his coat. It matched his inner tunic and caused the copper snake wrapped around his brow to stand out even more. Meanwhile, the black of his clothing made his eyes as impenetrable as a winter night.

 

"Ah, it would be such a  _ shame _ were we to arrive late to the feast, would it not?" Oberyn's purr jolted Lyarra away from admiring her husband.

 

Instead she jerked up to meet his eyes and found his expression so painfully smug and knowing that her tongue refused to cooperate. She could think of absolutely nothing to say. This was a problem as her husband was prowling towards her with definite intent.

 

"Your Grace, I think your coat was an excellent choice." Gwyn spoke instead, her tone very helpful. "The black really brings out the gray in your hair."

 

Oberyn paused and glared at that, his smugness turning to annoyance. Lyarra latched onto the distraction eagerly. If not she was absolutely sure that the viper in front of her was going to take full advantage of the heat that had flooded her belly when he'd walked in.

 

"It's  _ very _ distinguished." Gwyn offered again.

 

"I do not know what I've done to deserve such awful ladies as you in my household." Her husband lamented firmly and Lyarra snorted.

 

"We should ask Lord Gargalen. I'm sure he has a list somewhere."

 

"He's likely entrusted it to Doran for proper annotation, otherwise it might be left incomplete." Oberyn deadpanned and then stepped forward and slid his hands slowly down her arms, toying with the golden bangles now decorating both wrists. "You're stunning. Dorne can claim the most beautiful princess in the Seven Kingdoms."

 

"I'm the only princess currently in the Seven Kingdoms." Lyarra narrowed her eyes at him and Oberyn grinned back, having returned her sally from the first feast.

 

"We've time yet before we go, so I wished to speak to you. Mine uncle as well." Oberyn said more seriously and Lyarra took his arm and allowed her to lead her from the room, though he paused at the door. "Before we go-."

 

"I had a small bowl of nuts and a glass of water sweetened with strawberry jam." Lyarra cut him off. "I have not had a nap and am a bit tired, but since my pregnancy is known we can withdraw early and no-one will question it. I'm not at all light-headed and do not feel ill."

 

"If you are this exasperated with carrying before the child has even quickened, I fear for your willingness to give me future children."

 

Lyarra rested a hand over her belly in the ridiculous feeling that she had to soothe the baby from its father's implication that she was somehow exasperated with its presence in her womb.

 

"It's not carrying the babe I'm exasperated with. It's the babe's father and my father for being utterly ridiculous about a few faint spells." Lyarra protested. "You set  _ Arya _ on me."

 

"Yes, I did." He sounded so proud of that. "When we get to Dorne I will see she is properly relieved, of course. I've enough daughters to have you watched in shifts."

 

Lyarra considered several courses of action and then punched her husband in the shoulder, prompting an overlapping chuckle and giggling. The chuckling came from Lord Gargalen, who was dressed in sumptuous formal robes of crimson accented with gold. Gwyn was sitting on the settee. She was the source of the giggling. Lyarra allowed her husband to lead her over to sit by Gwyn. He glanced out of the window at the sun, checking time the way all Dornishmen did with such accuracy, and then settled in a seat of his own.

 

"Ser Arron told me that the Imp of Casterly Rock importuned you with his presence today, Lyarra." Oberyn was entirely serious as he leaned forward. "You were approached by one of  _ Tywin Lannister's _ children and did not inform me directly?"

 

"I - he did no harm and it slipped my mind in my nervousness once Lady Olenna's invitation arrived. You were busy elsewhere, and -" Lyarra confessed honestly, surprised. Realizing her mistake she immediately apologized, glad that she could feel anger beneath the surface, but that her husband was composed and waiting for an answer. "I'm sorry. It's just that Lady Olenna is far more intimidating than a polite man far shorter than I who wants to discuss reading material."

 

"Do not underestimate Lord Tyrion. A half-man though he may be, he's from a formidable house, and Jon Arryn would not have appointed him King's Counter without reason." Lord Gargalen advised as Oberyn got up out of his seat to pace.

 

Lyarra snagged his hand as he passed and looked up at him solemnly.

 

"I won't." Lyarra promised a little weakly. "Truly. He just - he said nothing of importance I could place. He didn't even ask me any questions. He seemed so surprised I offered him even basic courtesy."

 

"Considering who you are married to, are you surprised?"

 

"It has less to do with what would be a very reasonable fear of you, Prince Oberyn, and more to do with being a dwarf." Gwyn spoke into the quiet, her tone a mixture of the blank politeness she was so good at and something quieter and darker. "If ever there was a person Tywin Lannister bothered to feel enough for in order to hate after the Mad King was dead, it's Lord Tyrion."

 

Hearing her friend's voice, Lyarra turned to look at where Gwyn sat, prim, proper and very controlled. The Princess recalled her one point of discomfort with the Imp. Releasing the hand she'd held to keep her husband from walking himself into a temper, she reached out and squeezed Gwyn's shoulder instead.

 

"Are you alright? He paid you more attention than he paid anyone else, I think."

 

"Indeed?" Oberyn's expression shifted from angry and calculating to focused as he turned to look directly at Gwyn. Gwyn studiously looked upon the guest suite solar's carpet. "Lady Gwyn, did the Lannister try to intimidate you?"

 

"I am alright, and he did not." She looked up and licked her lips and Lyarra reached out, seeing her friend's hands were clenched in her lap again. "I believe he was merely curious to see how someone like me ended up your wife's lady-in-waiting. Lord Tyrion was only in Casterly Rock for the first few months I was there. His father sent him on a mission to the Vale to try and buy inoculation goats from the Mountain Clans shortly after I arrived. He spent months dodging arrows and clubs and swords in the valleys of the Mountains of the Moon, and then the better part of a year as Lady Lysa Arryn's prisoner before word got out about his presence in the Eyrie. Lord Tywin seemed quite silently vexed when he returned with a loyal sellsword in tow."

 

"And?" Lord Gargalen prompted gently while Lyarra rubbed her thumbs over Gwyn's knuckles. "You said he was curious?"

 

"I don't believe it was merely Lord Tyrion who was curious." Lyarra added. "He said he was speaking to Lord Tywin about Gwyn."

 

Both of the Dornishmen frowned, and oddly enough Gwyn smiled. It wasn't a nice expression, Lyarra thought, but it also wasn't like anything she'd seen on Gwyn's face before. It was a tangled mix of old rage and something new and sardonic. It might have even been something akin to hope. It seemed unlikely to be the hope for anything good, however.

 

"The Lannisters don't  _ know _ me, Lord Gargalen." Gwyn spoke slowly, as if gathered her words up from pieces on the ground and putting them together into something new. "Even when I was Lady Genna's newest and most favorite pet, I hardly mattered. I believe that someone has brought me to Lord Tywin's attention, and it's displeased him that he has found something critical about his own place and people that he doesn't know."

 

"And what do you believe he will do about it?" Lord Gargalen asked and Gwyn shrugged.

 

"First, what he's already done: try and find out what he does not know."

 

"And after that?" Oberyn asked.

 

"He shall do one of three things, or perhaps a combination of them." Gwyn answered, brushing her hands down over her black skirt. She looked, Lyarra thought, a strange combination of old and young as she spoke. "He will try and find out, as he has. Then once he knows, he's going to want to take control of me. His first objective will likely be the hope that I can be turned against you. When he realizes that won't work, and when he realizes what I know, the second thing will happen. He will try and  _ take _ control of me. If that does not work, then he will try the third."

 

"He'll try and kill you." Oberyn said quietly and Gwyn shrugged, her hands shaking but her lips curling up into a smile.

 

"I'm not as afraid of that as I was." She replied with a surprising honesty. "All of his chief monsters are otherwise occupied, and you're here and Lord Stark. I'm willing to take the risk."

 

" _ No _ ," Lyarra shook her head, sitting forward. "Gwyn, you're not taking any risks. We'll be careful, you'll have guards, and then we'll leave."

 

"The Princess is correct, Lady Gwyn." Lord Gargalen frowned. "Your life-."

 

"Is mine and no-one else's." Gwyn did something unlike herself, leaning forward and interrupting a powerful man, and Lyarra was shocked by the light trapped in her dark blue eyes. She got up and wandered over to stand with her back against the stone wall by the fireplace and her hands shook violently against where she clasped them over her skirt as she stood straight. "A-all my life I've been small. I've been weak and insignificant and I haven't cared. I was happy once, and I've learned I can be happy again. Going to Winterfell taught me that. Safety is an illusion, but happiness can be real, Lyarra. It's our job to protect it."

 

"Strictly speaking, as the Prince of your mistress' household, it is  _ my _ duty to protect it." Oberyn finally broke his temporary silence and surprised Lyarra by sitting by her again, carefully making sure he didn't loom over Gwyn while she stood. "I do not want you risking yourself for revenge, and you don't have to risk yourself for Lyarra. There are many around you who are stronger and faster."

 

"Right now the dangerous players in the Game aren't strong and fast, Your Grace, or have you forgotten Master Tollen?" Gwyn shook her head and again that smile appeared. "It's not who you  _ are _ ; it's what you  _ know _ ."

 

"And you know many things, yes?" Oberyn leaned forward, his tone low and soft, like scales sliding against each other in a dry, dark place. "Would you share this with us?"

 

"I don't want you doing whatever you're doing alone, Gwyn, and what if it goes wrong?" Lyarra insisted and stood up to go stand by her friend, pressed side-to-side against one another shoulder to shoulder against the wall like they had after Gwyn woke up in the night shaking and gasping for breath in her first weeks at Winterfell. "This isn't spying on Father. At worst he'd confine you to our room and be disappointed. This is  _ dangerous _ ."

 

"The Game of Thrones always is." Gwyn agreed, her expression wavering between uncertainty and that strange courage that was boiling up beneath the skin on her shaking hands and twisting into deep waves in the blue of her eyes. "You either win or you die, Lyarra, and neither of us wanted to play. The Gods have other intentions. If they didn't, your wrist would be bare and you'd have been hidden away with the Smalljon where nothing remarkable would ever happen to you. Mayhaps this is for the best. You've  _ seen _ what's happening to the smallfolk here."

 

Lyarra frowned at that, her stomach beginning to twist as she feared that they were on the edge of talking treason. Something she knew was living just slightly to the left of every exchange she had with her husband. Something she was terrifically afraid of and couldn't help feeling was a horrible, vile act?

 

Hadn't her father committed it, though, and King Robert? At what point was treason justified? Could the death of a Lord Paramount and his Heir, could a call for the heads of other nobility, be measured equally against the deaths of tens of thousands of peasants? The smallfolk were people as well, and it was the solemn duty, the purpose of lords of all ranks to protect them.

King Robert seemed to mean well, but he wasn't doing as he ought, Lyarra could see. Lord Twyin went without saying. Whatever he'd intended, however well he'd run the country for King Aerys for all of those years he'd been Hand, something had gone awry with him after the Rebellion as well if he'd robbed the Winter Fund. Where did it all end and where did right and wrong live? Lyarra couldn't help feeling like she'd been living in some kind of box before, where everything was painted in black or white. Now, since her marriage, everything had exploded into color and shades of gray and it was very hard to realize what each one meant or which was the right hue to choose.

 

"What do you mean?" Lyarra asked her friend and Gwyn shrugged.

 

"I mean, it's time to stop being afraid." Gwyn replied quietly, then grimaced. "Except of the things you  _ should _ be afraid of."

 

"Like?" Oberyn prompted while Lord Gargalen sat back and listened.

 

"I cannot see Lord Tyrion as being evil. He was just too… too surprised at any kindness offered."

 

Lyarra found herself defending the dwarf slightly, still caught by the flicker of surprised pleasure he'd shown her courteous response to his interruption and his delight in having been readily offered something so unimportant as a sweet bun. It reminded her too much of herself, when being a bastard meant every kindness and sign of respect was worth more than gold. It reminded her of Gwyn as well, who watched the world out of suspicious eyes.

 

"You don't have to be entirely evil, or even mostly evil, Lyarra. Situational evil is perfectly sufficient." Oberyn scowled at her now. "Stay away from the Lannisters. I will make it an order if I have to."

 

Lyarra glared at him, offended that he'd try that. She was more offended that he thought it would work. Technically she knew that, as a wife, she ought to take her Prince's word as law on such things, but since when did Oberyn obey the technicalities of proper behavior? If he wasn't going to, why should she?

 

"You shouldn't avoid him because of  _ what _ he is. Avoid him because of what he  _ might _ be." Gwyn hurried to add. "Lyarra, I don't know him."

 

Gwyn paused then, as if she was going to say something and then stopped. It was, of course, seen immediately. Lyarra was about to tell her it was alright. As always before, she wanted to reassure Gwyn that she didn't have to say anything. Gwyn wanted her friend happy.

 

"As you've said, you do not either." Lord Gargalen's cultured voice was gentle. "Do you perhaps know something  _ of _ Lord Tyrion that we should all be aware of?"

 

"I'm not sure." Gwyn looked uncomfortable and when she spoke her accent grew thicker and less polished as she stumbled over the words. "I was never sure what was true. There were a lot of different versions of the rumor… and he was kind to me, before he left, and before Old Gretchen told me to keep away from him if I didn't want my reputation ruined, what with his whoring and all."

 

"You could tell us all of the rumors, and we could decide what we believed?"

 

Gwyn bit her lip and breathed for a bit before pushing herself tighter against the all and nodding.

 

"All of the rumors agree on this: When Lord Tyrion was about three-and-ten or a bit more, he kept a crofter's daughter about his own age as a bit of fun, and put her in a cottage near the Sunset Sea so he could visit her."

 

Gwyn took a moment to wring her hands and breathe before going on, and Lyarra reached out to twine their fingers together so Gwyn didn't scratch herself. She was relieved when it worked and Gwyn's grip on her own hands relaxed and she trembled less as she went on.

 

"Ben, who kept the chimneys clear, holds that Lord Tyrion got tired of the girl and threw her to the guards to have their way with before selling her into slavery to some Ironman captain. Ben said he saw her being led out by Tommen with the crooked foot, who was one of the worst of the guards, and that she had blood dripping down her skirts and Tommen was more dragging her than walking her down to the docks."

 

Lyarra's own horror and outrage mixed with her husband, fanning the fires of his fury. Beside them Lord Gargalen was a silent figure. He sat with his hand gripping his cane and simply listened.

 

"Hanna, who was in the laundry, said that Lord Tyrion tried to  _ save _ her from the guards, but couldn't because his father was there. She thinks that he cared about the girl and Lord Tywin made him watch and then join in. The guard barracks is near the laundry, and she said she could hear the girl shrieking and calling for the Imp to save her, and then begging him to stop. Hanna says he spent the next day sick, crying, and then he got terribly drunk."

 

Lyarra felt ill.

 

"The last one I heard was that Lord Tyrion was keeping the girl, but Lord Tywin found out and - because he hates his son - gave him a choice between losing his allowance and his place in the family and throwing the girl to the guards and joining in himself. It all comes down to the same thing."

 

"That even the  _ best _ of the Lannisters would be the worst by another man's measure." Oberyn agreed, his voice harsh before turning as his temper receded in worry. "Lyarra, are you alright?"

 

"I just..." Lyarra reached up and rubbed a hand over her face and then turned and embraced Gwyn. "How could you live in a place like that?"

 

" _ Carefully _ ." Gwyn muttered against her shoulder as she melted into her embrace.

 

* * *

 

The sound of the King choking on his ale was drowned out for Ned due to his own loud intake of breath. The Dornish arrived slightly late, but that was to be expected. It was likely time for an exhibitionist like the Red Viper to make an entrance. Ned just wished he hadn't done it with Ned's daughter wearing something so obscene.

 

"Lyarra, what are you wearing?" Ned demanded quietly, then, before she could answer he turned to her husband. "What do you think you're doing?"

 

"I am making a Dornishwoman of her, as I said I would." Her husband replied, and if his smile was all insolent hubris as he slid into his chair on Lyarra's other side, his eyes were cold, dark, and level in their gaze.

 

The feast tonight was informal. This time it was hosted in the gardens. Tables had been set up and Ned sat next to Robert again. A few moments before, this had even been pleasant. With eight chairs left empty for the Dornish party to his left, Ned was actually able to just sit and talk to Jon, who sat opposite him with the Tyrells, and talk. He could almost pretend he was a boy in the Eyrie again, which was likely Robert's intention as all talk that evening had been bent on the happy past.

 

The Queen was conspicuously absent. Supposedly she'd set up the meal, and was now refusing to attend to protest her son's continued exile to his quarters. Ned had an uncomfortable feeling in his gut that this wasn't so. He was sitting close enough to Robert to see scratch marks of the sort left by a woman's nails hidden beneath the thick black hair of his beard.

 

"I know it's a bit much, Father, but  _ you _ were the one who said how intolerable the heat in Dorne is." Lyarra at least tried to console him with logic. "This is much more comfortable in the summer heat even here. I can't imagine trying to wear my dresses from home in such weather, and Sunspear will be far hotter."

 

"I… can imagine it would be practical." Ned managed to say through intense parental disapproval, as he did not want to hurt his daughter's feelings. "Could it not have been saved for  _ Dorne _ ?"

 

"Always prudish, Ned, I don't remember such words about the Lady Ashara's dresses at Harrenhal." Robert Baratheon rasped. "You look lovely, Lya-Princess. A beautiful woman like you shouldn't be ashamed to show it off."

 

"Much as I thought when I chose the gown for her, Your Grace." Oberyn Martell, having drawn Lyarra's chair flush against his again, leaned down to press a kiss against her bare shoulder before curling a hand across her stomach. "Besides, no daughter of mine would ever be pleased covered in so many layers of fabric on a warm night such as this."

 

Ned gave in to the urge to scowl. He scowled at the Viper for being his licentious self and corrupting his daughter. He scowled at Lord Gargalen for looking amused. He scowled over at Lord Tyrell when he caught Mace Tyrell staring fixedly at his daughter's chest. Then, finally, he shot Robert a pained look when he caught his best friend doing the same. Robert, of all of them, had the grace to look abashed and clear his throat to call for more ale.

 

Lyarra's gown, if it could be called such, was something that Ned's honesty compelled him to admit he might have once seen other Dornish ladies wear something similar to. On the rare occasions he was in such ladies presence, however, he did his best to keep his eyes affixed to their  _ faces _ . He was a married man.

 

In Lyarra's case, the gown was made out of thin, flowing fabric in a fiery shade of orange. The dress was all draperies, with the fabric wrapped and twisted around her hips and then flowing around her legs in a loose skirt. The only suggestion of a bodice was a single rectangle of orange fabric that was sewn cross the front of her belly. It was then gathered and thrown carelessly, cape-like, over her right shoulder.

 

Had it not been for a pair of red silk triangles of fabric sewn with ribbons that went behind her neck and around her ribs to be tied together intricately at her back, her chest would have been bare. As it was, her breasts were only covered in the strictest sense, and the dark red of the fabric with its gold beading stood out shockingly against the pale color of her skin. If anything, what she was wearing just drew more attention to what she was not.

 

Her wrists were covered with an array of beaten gold bangles. He knew those to be a wedding gift from Prince Doran. While he was pleased to see his daughter confident enough to wear them and to twine gold ribbons through her hair and up through the chains of her circlet, Ned Stark couldn't help wishing that Prince Oberyn would take that damned shawl he was wearing for affectation and throw it over his wife. Ned was perhaps one more leer from a servant, lord, or knight away from draping Lyarra in his own surcoat, propriety be damned.

 

The night went on much as Ned had grown to expect feasts in King's Landing to go on. Robert got drunk. Jon attempted to conduct political talks and cement Robert's reign in the place of the King. Ned was uncomfortable, and Oberyn Martell was all over Lyarra with kisses and caresses while Robert drank and seethed because he'd mistaken Lyarra for Lyanna in his fantasies. There had been few occasions in his life where Ned had missed Winterfell more, and that was saying something.

 

Finally, just as Robert had reached a point in his drunkenness where the Viper's barbs were no longer registering and the prince went to excuse himself and Lyarra so that Ned's daughter could rest, the King lurched to his feet.

 

"No, no, stay a moment." The King stood at the head of the table. "I have an  _ announcement _ ."

 

The portentous tone he used caused every Dornishmen and half the others at the table to stiffen.

 

"I've heard it said, bandied about by mean and petty men.  _ Cowards _ who won't speak to their King's face, that their ruler does not pay his debts." Robert began and he felt his own back stiffen. "Let it be known that the Crown is not unaware of these rumors and those who spread them."

 

A few nervous faces appeared and then vanished behind the duplicitious court masks all Southrons seemed to wear. Ned caught a glimpse of a flash of disgust in the Kingslayer's eyes as he stood on duty and felt his own temper flare. As if Jaime Lannister had any right to judge Robert.

 

"Well, for all those fine people here who know of what I speak, mind yourselves, and mind what you hear now!" Robert went on, and then turned to Ned and the anger on his face turned into a smug grin as he snapped his fingers.

 

With a reluctance that was hard to express, Lord Tyrion Lannister came forward. The King towered over him; a fat giant in sweat and ale stained golden silks and a dwarf in spotless crimson velvet. It was a ludicrous image. Bowing, Lord Tyrion handed the king a scroll.

 

"N- Lord Eddard Stark." Robert regained some grip on formality. "Who has held the North for me, and has been my right hand in every battle I've fought."

 

Lord Tywin Lannister, who had taken King's Landing for an injured Robert, sat grim faced and unreadable.

 

"When everyone else in this kingdom would have had me _beg_ for assistance for the poor and starving of this city and realm. When even _mine_ _own_ _brother_ forced me to _order_ him to support this throne as is his duty."

 

Lord Renly Baratheon was white-faced with anger, and the Knight of Flower's grip on his left wrist seemed to be the only thing grounding him in any kind of self-control.

 

"When _all_ _others_ had forsaken me, it was the Warden of the North who offered the Crown a loan for the good of its people." Robert looked around, his lips twisting in disgust. "The North. Who we decry as barbarians. He showed his King the loyalty he has never failed to show."

 

The Hand of the King sat silent, his blue eyes pained.

 

"As such, I now make the funds available, immediately and in full, to repay that debt." Robert held the scroll out and instinct alone had Ned reach out in shock to take it as Robert's show of formality broke down in a deep chuckle. "Well, Ned, read it!"

 

Ned opened the scroll, seeing the royal seal affixed beneath Robert's bold and wandering signature. The amount was precisely what it should be.  _ How _ , though? Ned knew the Crown to be deeply in debt.

 

"The King is indeed most generous." Ned allowed, not sure of what else to say. "Thank you."

 

Robert laughed deeply at that, slapping him on the back. Ned returned to his chair, not sure of what else to do. He tried to catch Jon's eye, but he just shook his head minutely. It was an action Ned had almost no familiarity with in the proud, stern man who'd all but raised him. What could you do when faced with a king's will, however? Robert had been an unhappy King, Ned now realized, for far longer than he'd been anything else.

 

The revelry went on. Though the Viper excused himself and Lyarra, other members of the Dornish party stayed. Ned mostly stayed quiet, though he spoke to Robert whenever he turned to him. It didn't take much to keep Robert happy. With the repayment given and the Queen nowhere in sight, several comely serving girls took turns perched upon the King's knee and were graced with his exuberant affections.

 

Thought all of this, the party around them moved on. Tywin Lannister left soon after Oberyn and Lyarra. Ned didn't blame him. The Old Lion was owed far more than he was and for far longer, if rumor was to be believed. The Tyrells were impossible to read, save for Lord Mace, who was merely interested in gaining what attention and acclaim he could from those nobles around him. Lord Renly left nearly immediately with his soulmate. Between losing his seat on the Small Council, the mess with the Lady Shireen, and Robert's harsh and unfair words, Ned wouldn't be surprised if he left before the tourney was over.

 

The High Septon was too far in his own cups to protest. He'd been barely sensible during the whole exchange. Ned was left grateful for the fact that the Old Faith was spreading, and it left him uncomfortable to think of how far the Southron's faith had fallen. Cat did not speak of drunken men whose visits to brothels were poorly kept secrets, nor did her worship include the necessity of supporting them in crystal crowns and silken habits. She spoke of piety and was herself a pious woman, but he couldn't help looking at what he'd seen of the crumbling, corrupt Faith in King's Landing and its constant fear and harassment of Robert for protection of its prerogatives without feeling disdain.

 

Ned had left the care and rearing of their daughters to Cat. He knew nothing of raising ladies, and was admittedly very incapable of talking to them in his own youth. It was Cat who'd given him confidence as they'd finished growing up together and put their lives back together after war tore all their expectations apart. As such, it was Cat he trusted to guide Sansa and Arya.

 

Cat's difficulties with Arya had been a source of amusement and fondness. He'd calmed her as best he could, pointing out that Arya had the wolf's blood. She wouldn't be a 'proper' lady, though she did need to learn some graces. He'd been grieved, but relieved, that sending her to Dorne with Lyarra offered a way for her to do this. Cat hadn't been prepared to raise a shewolf during her own upbringing in Riverrun.

 

Sansa, though? Ned had never had a moment's doubt about Cat's way with their eldest daughter. Sansa was developing into the very flower of beauty and courtesy. He was amazed and proud and heartbroken to watch her grow into such a young lady, yearning for his sweet little girl and wondering how she'd grown so. Never once in that time had he been worried.

 

Now he couldn't help a certain unease. Robert's reign, was unsure. The Crown Prince, who Ned knew Cat had once hoped for a betrothal to ( _ thank all of the Gods her last letter agreed with him fiercely in denying one now)  _ was mad. Things were not a story or a song or anything else gentle. Ned could feel and smell and sense the danger, and while a part of him yearned to be there for Jon and Robert, a larger part of him, a fiercer part of him would not have it.

 

Winter was coming and he needed to see to the survival of the pack. He needed to protect his family. He needed to go home and though part of him rebelled against accepting the money when so many other debts were owed? A larger part looked at the scroll at his elbow and saw Moat Cailin's walls rising strong above the waters of the Neck.

 

"Your Grace." Ned leaned over and Robert looked up from the second cold fowl he'd consumed in the evening, the giggling serving girl in his lap, and his ale horn.

 

"Hmm, yes, Ned?"

 

" _ Thank you _ ." Ned reached out and squeezed his friend's shoulder, feeling muscle that still lived underneath the fat. "Truly. I really needed this, and you came through for me."

 

"I always will, Ned." Robert grinned widely, and despite the extra flesh and the beard, it was Ned's friend, his brother, who grinned back before his face slid into concern. "You weren't hurting to give me that loan, were you?"

 

"No." Ned shook his head, and answered honestly. "I've three sons, though, and only small holdfasts to offer my youngest two. I've been thinking about rebuilding Moat Cailin for a while…"

 

"And now you can!" Robert grinned. "Ah, Ned, that's  _ perfect _ . Just the thing. Hell, Renly might even get his head out of his ass if your boy, Bran's, got a proper keep of his own to visit."

 

"Mayhaps." Ned allowed, but felt a twinge of pain for the absent stormlord. "Still, I thank you. I think I'm off to check on my girls, and then I'm for bed."

 

"Ah, you always were no good at a revel." Robert chuckled and reached out to snag another serving wench. "That's fine. Make sure that Viper's treating Lyarra right. You should be careful with a woman with child, and she's so damned young."

 

A shade of shared grief fell over both of them, though Robert didn't know the full truth, thank all of the Gods. To him it was just Lyarra's age. For Ned it was much more than that, but no-one need ever know.

 

"She'll be fine." Ned said, as much to reassure himself as anyone else. "Enjoy your revelry."

 

"I will!" The King's laughter boomed out and Ned left, the scroll held carefully in his hand. He would see the funds received and transferred tomorrow. The Iron Bank might resent that Ned had received payment first, but they'd handle the money carefully and honestly. House Stark had ever been an honest customer, and promptly paid whatever little business they kept with the First Bank of Braavos.

 

Ser Domeric Bolton rose at the same time that Ned did and joined him in his silent walk back to the nearest entrance and then through the Red Keep's corridors.

 

"I couldn't help hearing that Moat Cailin's to be rebuilt, my lord." The young knight said after a moment, his tone quiet but obviously pleased and a bit excited. "I'm sure the entire North will be pleased to hear it, if I may say as much. It's never felt right, not having a major castle over the Neck to guard it."

 

"Aye." Ned agreed. "It's about time. We're about to see a Winter unlike any the North's seen in many generations. We need to be strong enough to survive anything."

 

What might come besides white winds and terrible cold? Ned was afraid to think of it. As he turned, he caught the knight's milk-glass gaze, gleaming pale in the light of a tall, thin glazed window. The boy's handsome face was set in grim lines, and for the first time he was reminded just slightly of Roose Bolton rather than the lad's Ryswell blood.

 

"Yes, Lord Stark." The boy agreed solemnly. " _ Anything _ ."

 

It went unspoken that the boy had seen Robert's drinking. He's seen the Queen and King's feelings for each other. Nobody could miss the Crown Prince's madness. That so much other disarray was also on view was tying Ned's stomach into a knot in fear for Robert even as his frustration with his friend's behavior knew nearly no bounds. Not to mention the building annoyance and anger over how Robert was behaving towards Lyarra. Ned knew that at least half of it was the Red Viper's fault for baiting the King so, but it didn't change the fact that Lyarra was Ned's daughter.

 

Well, technically not, but she was his blood and he'd raised her. His daughter she would always be. Either way?

 

Either way Ned saw again the proud, strong, decent young man that Ser Domeric Bolton was. He also noticed that, plate armor and title aside? The Heir to the Dreadfort was  _ Northern _ . He prayed to the Old Gods. He lived for the cold winds. He knew the ways of Ned's- their- people, and he was strong enough to protect and subtle enough not to reveal himself as he did so.

 

"Ser Domeric." Ned planted a hand on the boy's shoulder. "The North appreciates your loyalty and values your House. I would be honored if, on your way to the Dreadfort, you spent some time at Winterfell."

 

Ser Domeric paused and a war of pleasure at the compliment and the desire of a hard man's son to please his father went on across his face. Ned decided to end the battle. It wouldn't be pleasant, but it would answer nicely for other reasons.

 

"Write to your father and tell him that Winterfell would be honored by his presence as well. He is my most powerful bannermen, and I'll have much to discuss with him."

 

Pleased by the compliment to his House, Ser Domeric Bolton could only accept. Ned, meanwhile, made a few more decisions. The first was that Septa Mordane was going to find herself returned to the Riverlands when he was once again in the North. The second was that he was going to throw Sansa into company with Ser Domeric as often as possible, and if there was the slightest sign of a congenial match available, he was going to have the betrothal contract written within six moons time. With proper management, he could pin down the loyalty of his most valuable but least trustworthy bannermen as well as assure Sansa's safety. Whatever else was said about Roose Bolton; the man honored his blood and his pride if he honored nothing else and this would sop both of them.

 

Winter was coming, and ensuring the North and his family's survival was his first duty as a Stark.

 


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cersei has a party, Gwyn and Lyarra are the entertainment, and Ser Barristan the Bold had has enough of this nonsense.

**Chapter Twenty-Four - 297 A.C** .

 

"The Lady Sansa's doing right well, Lady Stark." The head cook told her as they both stood in the great vaulted kitchens of Winterfell. "She's not stepped into it quite like Lady Gwyn did, but that girl was closer to us than the likes of you, if you don't find it disrespectful for me to say so."

 

"I don't." Catelyn agreed wryly with the woman, then amended it because she realized suddenly it might have sounded like an insult. "The Lady Gwyn grew up in a household with few servants, so she was more used to the work of organizing a kitchen or pantry. It's not impertinent for you to recognize that, and you're speaking ill of neither of the ladies in question. I was taught how to handle household servants from more of a distance in my own home, and recall the difficulties I had when I came north and realized that it would take a more involved approach to be the Lady of Winterfell."

 

"Yes, m'lady." The thin woman, who was perhaps ten years older than Cat, nodded and offered her a smile. It touched her gray Northern eyes as she spoke. "I remember. If I can say so, Lady Stark, you were a mite confused, but you were kind about it. The Lady Sansa's the same; always polite and always nice about her business the way the Starks have  _ always _ been. Our Lord Ned's always been the same way."

 

Cat felt a rush of relief at that. She'd come to Winterfell prepared to be the Lady of a  _ Southron _ Lord as she'd heard the servants whisper. She'd anticipated working through the higher servants and never speaking to any of the lower servants as she'd done at Riverrun. There she'd approved menus, when carefully managing the household in the year before her marriage so she might be prepared for it. Cat had concentrated on all of the arts of a lady who would be expected to be watched and to lead all of the bannermen's wives in their behavior.

 

"Thank you, Tonya, it's good to hear the Lady Sansa is doing so well." Cat thanked the woman and took her leave from the kitchens.

 

After her marriage she'd quickly found that the North was different.  _ Every _ Lady was Queen of her household and they didn't travel much. There were no tourneys. There was no court at Winterfell with the daughters of bannermen of marriageable age coming to stay there so that court could be paid to them by Heirs and hopeful second sons.

 

Instead Cat found herself in a position much like any Northern bannerman's lady would have found themselves. The only difference was scale. Her husband was Warden of the North, so a whole host of responsibilities that a lady normally wouldn't have had fell upon her shoulders. She did far more to mind the crops and hunting rotations than other ladies would. She had to adjudicate disputes when her husband wasn't present at Winterfell. All of those were things she could do and excelled in, after having spent years as her father's Heir Presumptive while they waited for Edmure to be born.

 

What had tripped Cat up terribly was the fact that she was expected to be oh-so-much _more_ _involved_ with the running of the castle's individual parts. She did more than mind the books those first years. She had to go down and give instructions _directly_ and the head cook and others presumed she'd know details of how things were done she'd never heard of before. A Northern lady didn't just _order_ food planted, harvested, and preserved; a Northern lady knew how these things were done. She was expected to supervise. She was expected to _help_ , at least in the beginning. There was a mythical significance placed on the Lady of Winterfell's hands and it was thought that if she didn't contribute to at least the beginning of certain food preservation processes, then the food wouldn't last properly.

 

Cat had always been unsettled a bit by Old Nan, but she'd also been grateful to her. The old woman had been invaluable in quietly teaching her how to assume these duties. Duties she had to admit she was even now uncomfortable with. She'd kept the most important duties, but discarded those that she'd felt wouldn't actively hurt her status with her husband's people. She was seeing now that this had contributed to her people considering her haughty.

 

_ It was too late,  _ Cat knew,  _ to correct this. _ It also hurt a little because she'd had so many reasons for only keeping the bare bones of those old traditions. Ned had not been prepared for his position as Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. Catelyn Stark had been her father's favorite and groomed to be a Lady Paramount long enough to see that Rickard Stark had never presumed to need to train his second son for such a post. Nor had his time in the Eyrie done anything to help. Jon Arryn had made Ned into the finest knight she'd ever met, minus the Seven and the spurs. He had not taught him the practicalities of ruling.

 

So it had fallen to Cat to help Ned learn to rule. It was really those first years, when they were both struggling, that they'd fallen in love. They'd been thrust together in a war, driven apart by Ned's infidelity and insistence on bringing a bastard into her home, and then brought back together by how badly they needed each other. Winterfell had not  _ wanted _ a Southron lady. Ned had never  _ wanted _ to be Warden of the North.  _ Together _ they'd made a wonderful life for themselves and had five wonderful children.

 

_ 'Six _ ,' Cat reminded herself,  _ 'Your husband has six children.'  _ Reaching down she brushed a hand over her gown's pocket and the neat letter within as she walked down Winterfell's warm hallways. Just that morning more Ravens from King's Landing had arrived. Cat had been ambivalent about another letter from her husband's daughter, but she'd also been quick to read it. Her last letter had proven true, and the blunt honesty involved in describing Prince Joffrey's mad cruelty a vital piece of knowledge Ned had only hinted at out of his respect for her feelings.

This letter was better. Cat was relieved to read that the Crown Prince was being sent away to Casterly Rock for fostering. If nothing else it showed that the King acknowledged his Heir's mad behavior. This letter was a brief thing, perfectly polite, and containing more political information to the tune of the King's interest in perhaps wedding Bran to Lady Shireen and putting him in line for the throne that way. Cat wasn't necessarily  _ displeased _ with that idea, but she was displeased to learn that the King had caused a rift with his brother over it, and that now Lord Tywin was on the Small Council.

 

Ned's letter had been both better and worse. Better because it was Ned. Cat treasured his letters while they were apart, though they did nothing to mitigate the sadness and frustration of an empty bed. It contained much the same political information, but also more besides. There was more news of Ned's plans for Moat Cailin. There were inquiries after Sansa, Rickon, and Robb, as well as Cat herself. All of that was lovely.

 

What wasn't lovely was the regrettable fact that Cat was Ned's only source for information on the carrying and birthing of children. The way he fretted for all of his babes made her love him more, but she could have lived without being applied to for advice on how to best coddle the child he'd so embarrassed her with.

 

_ 'Family, Duty, Honor… and Humility.' _ Cat reminded herself of her new duties in becoming a better woman and seeking the Gods' favor through being a just woman. Little as she liked doing it, she took her duties as a wife and a good person seriously. So she did what she could do to reassure Ned that some women were just faint and a little ill during their pregnancies. It as nothing to worry over. Prince Oberyn could be trusted to watch over his new wife, if nothing else, for his reputation as a father was one of considerable affection even amongst his enemies. She'd heard her father deride the prince for producing and then taking on so many bastards often enough, after all, and heard the man's prideful boasting about the Sand Snakes. Ned should trust the man to look after his own wife!

 

Catelyn had other matters to attend to. She would write her own Lord Father in a few hours. First she wanted to see how Sansa was getting along in her lessons. Septa Mordane had not taken well to Cat's choice to step up and assume more control over her daughter's education. The time Sansa spent directly with Cat, learning to create and maintain a household's books, the time Sansa spent now monitoring the kitchens, and the time Sansa was now spending with Master Luwin, going over crop rotations and growing seasons with Robb, was cutting into the time she'd long expected to have with the Lord of Winterfell's oldest and fairest trueborn daughter.

 

Catelyn knew that the hostility that the Septa faced from the inhabitants of Winterfell itself was no small thing and had increased in the years since the Plague. Cat herself felt sorry for it, and wished she could mitigate it more as she felt a kinship with the only other woman who worshipped the Seven exclusively in her home. That did not mean that she could change her plans for preparing Sansa for the Northern marriage that Ned had written of desiring for her daughter. She just wished that the Septa didn't feel so slighted by the changes. Surely she understood that, at two-and-ten, Sansa was no longer a little girl to be coddled with only songs and the arts for comfort.

 

Cat was just down the hall from the door of the room that Lady Septa had claimed as her schoolroom for the ladies of the house when she heard a  _ terrifying _ sound; the snarl of a furious direwolf and the heartbreaking wail that Rickon always let out when hurt. Lady Stark didn't even think. She simply moved. One moment she was standing at the corner of the hallway and the next second she was wrenching the door to the room open in terror of one of the wild animals her children had claimed having finally turned on them.

 

That was not, however, what Cat saw when she opened the door. As she opened the door she heard another sound altogether. The curious smack of someone's hand hitting flesh.

 

With the door open Cat looked inside at a  _ shocking _ scene. Her littlest boy was sitting on the floor, clutching his wrist and sobbing. Shaggydog was nowhere to be seen, and it was  _ Lady _ who stood in front of where Septa Mordane was collapsed against a corner wall. The direwolf who was usually the most placid of the pack stood with her hackles raised and her teeth bared around a mouthful of gray fabric obviously torn from the ragged skirts of the Septa's dress.

 

Sansa stood directly in front of where Septa Mordane was leaning forward with one of her hands raised, her fingers clenched into a fist and her own teeth bared in a strange mirror of her wolf. Her blue eyes gleamed bright in the room and her face was flushed with anger. Septa Mordane had a livid mark growing dark against her cheek, though her eyes flickered from where they stared in fear at the wolf and its mistress to Lady Stark with clear relief.

 

"Lady Stark-!" The woman began to speak, only to be cut off as Sansa darted forward and uncurled her fingers, brutally slapping the older woman across the mouth this time with the back of her hand.

 

" _ Sansa _ !" Cat cried in shock, moving forward to Rickon first. "How-"

 

"I will not hear a word from her lying mouth, Mother!" Sansa's voice was thin and brittle with fury, and she whirled around to join Cat. "She was  _ hurting _ Rickon!"

 

"My Lady-" Septa Mordane said again, but her attempt to lurch forward was stopped when Lady spat out her mouthful of fabric and lunged at the woman, prompting a terrified shriek.

 

"Sansa, call her off this instant!"

 

Sansa remained ominously silent for a moment as Lady continued to snarl and snap just inches away from the woman's legs. She did, however, call her direwolf back before the Septa was actually bitten. Lady immediately stepped back, but continued to growl low in her throat as Sansa, who was standing next to where Cat was holding a sobbing Rickon in her arms, came up to pet her brother's curly mop of auburn hair.

 

"Oh, his poor wrist." Sansa bit her lip as she touched the ring of bruises starting to darken on the pale skin of the little boy's wrist. Lady let out a low, ugly growl totally unlike the usually sweet mist-gray wolf.

 

"What happened?" Lady Stark demanded, addressing the question to the oldest woman in the room out of a lifetime of respect having been ingrained in her for the Faith and her own unease over seeing the normally placid Lady offer anyone violence.

 

"That beast attacked me!" The older woman gasped out. "I've done no wrong, Lady Stark-."

 

Rickon garbled some indistinguishable word against his mother's neck. His sister moved to speak instead. Sansa was flushed dark with anger.

 

"That's a  _ lie _ , Mother!" Sansa shook her head, her expression twisted with upset. "I had come in here for my daily lessons and Rickon followed me, but I realized I'd left my ledger for the kitchens in my room and went to get it so that when you came, we could check it together. I left Lady to watch Rickon and put him on the floor by the fire with the castle that Lyarra made him, and then I ran back to my room to get them."

 

"You left your brother?"

 

"With Lady!"

 

"Sansa-." Cat started at the same time that Septa Mordane rapidly began to speak.

 

"The wolf went for the boy, my lady, I grabbed his wrist to-."

 

" _ Letters _ !" Rickon wailed, now kicking and turning to point with his sore hand, his fingers barely closing, at the Septa. "Letters, Mama, letters!"

 

"What? Rickon, you've got to make sense." Cat began, utterly confused and furious at the entire situation.

 

Then she heard Sansa gasp and turn to look over at one of the tables. Striding over she turned left and right and then paused. When her dreamy, sweet little girl looked up, her expression had settled into something else entirely. Everyone said that Sansa was Cat's spitting image, though Cat was always proud to think that her daughter would far exceed any beauty she'd boasted in her own youth. In that moment, however, her fair face was all marble and her blue eyes were ice, and Sansa looked every inch a Stark as she turned to face the Septa.

 

"Where are they?"

 

"Lady Sansa, haven't you done enough-." The woman began to scold.

 

_ "Where are they?" _

 

Septa Mordane turned to look at Cat, her expression pleading. Lady Stark felt her own face slide into the calm, emotionless composure her father had taught her at his knee. The look wasn't of a lady and the woman she'd appointed to share the upbringing of her daughters upbringing saw it and quailed. It was the look of a Lord at Judgement, and Catelyn held firm and waited to see what Sansa would do. Since the Gods had seen fit to scold her through Lyarra's Mark, Cat had bent herself to trying to learn  _ humility _ , to be  _ fair _ , and to do it all for the sake of her own children. That had included seeing and acting on the necessity of teaching Sansa the essential skills of a true great lady. This was the first time that Cat would see those skills in use, and the mother in her was more devout than the worshipper.

 

"I will ask one more time, Septa." Sansa said, implacable. "Then I will stop asking. Where are my letters?"

 

"Give!" Rickon yelled, putting his own two coppers at high volume right next to his mother's ear.

 

When Lady, standing beside Sansa, let out a low snarl, the woman fumbled with the pockets of her long, gray gown. A moment later, from the depths of her skirts, she retrieved several hastily crumpled sheets of parchment. Sansa snatched them back from her with a furious expression on her face and held them up.

 

"Mother!" Sansa cried, the maturity having vanished in the outrage of a girl on the cusp of womanhood. "Mother, I did  _ not _ give her permission-."

 

"I'm aware of that, Sansa." Lady Stark stood up to her full height and stepped forward, Rickon still in her arms. "Go take Lady and get Maester Luwin. I want your brother's wrist seen to, so come back immediately. Lord Robb will be back from hunting shortly, I am sure."

 

"Shaggy." Rickon sniffled, curling up against his mother again and tucking his bruised wrist to his chest.

 

"Shaggydog will know, Mother, Rickon's right." She agreed. "He might have gone hunting with Robb and Greywind, but he'll be back shortly."

 

"Yes… Make sure the guards know not to open the gates until Robb knows to have Greywind in control of Shaggy. You know how he gets." Cat spoke with perfect calm. "We do not want anyone's throat ripped out accidentally."

 

"Lady Stark?" Septa Mordane's voice shook as Sansa left the room at a ladylike run utterly unlike her, with her direwolf loping at her side.

 

"Septa Mordane, please explain to me how my daughter's private letters came to be in your possession and my son injured while in your presence."

 

"The wolf-."

 

"Do not lie to me!" Cat's temper snapped, her tone harsh as she stepped forward, the light from the windows catching her hair and lighting the coppery-auburn into flame as Rickon watched with predatory calm from beneath his mother's chin. "Had any of the wolves taken Rickon's arm in their mouth with enough pressure to leave such bruises, my son wouldn't have half his arm, much less his hand. Instead there are fingerprints on my son. I will know how you justify this immediately."

 

"I- I did have the letters, my Lady, but I was merely concerned for what the bastard could be writing Lady Sansa!" Septa Mordane began to speak rapidly, wringing her hands together and then trying to cover her legs properly by rearranging the torn skirts. "Right I was, too. Lady Stark, I am sure you do not know, but the Snow girl and her wicked, immoral husband are attempting to destroy any hope of a match between your trueborn daughter and the Crown Prince!"

 

"Really?" Cat asked tensely, wanting to know what the woman would say even as she began to feel ill at the implications involved.

 

"Yes! You wouldn't believe the  _ lies _ she wrote of his behavior. As if a king-to-be, anointed by the true gods and chosen would ever torture men unjustifiably!"

 

"King Aerys might have enjoyed hearing that, once upon a time."

 

"That is  _ different _ ." Septa Mordane said stiffly. "The Targaryens were a godless lot, unclean and incesteous."

 

"Be that as it may, they were Kings, as once were most of the Great Families of Westeros." Cat replied coldly. "Mine own father would claim many things, but to have been immune to mistakes is not something I believe he would claim before the Gods."

 

"Lady Stark!" Septa Mordane cried out. "Surely you know what  _ bastards _ are like! Grasping and greedy, they ever seek to betray and take the rightful places of their trueborn kin. You've said it  _ yourself _ many a time! Now the Snow girl seeks to keep herself elevated above her sister's rightful place by spreading lies about the best match she could ever hope for!"

 

"Tell me, Septa, how do you know that these are lies?"

 

"I've heard it from the High Septon in King's Landing himself, Lady Stark." The Septa began to relax just slightly.

 

"I had no been aware that a household septa would be in such high company."

 

"As a member of your household, my lady, I am. The High Septon concerns himself greatly with the spiritual education of all of the Great Houses."

 

"I see." Lady Stark went on. In the back of her mind she thought of all of her efforts lately to find humility before the Gods' judgement to raise her husband's bastard so high at the expense of her own pride, and of all of the times in her childhood and adulthood some member of her Faith had pushed her to feel prouder still of who she was; her rank, her lineage, and her Faith. "And the High Septon holds that the tale of Prince Joffrey cutting the tongues out of merchants with no trial all because they were gossiping is untrue?"

 

"They're completely unfounded."

 

"So my Lord Husband is also a liar, then?"

 

Septa Mordane started slightly, and then she paled. Cat knew that Ned had not told her any such thing in specifics. Instead he’d merely written her of the crown prince’s madness in generalities. It was Robb who he’d written to of precisely what King Robert’s only surviving child had done, but by enticing the woman into such a declaration she now knew that the Septa had not had either access or courage to either her own correspondance or Robb’s. It was likely just the younger children, who were both more trusting and less cautious, whose letters she had been able to get her hands on.

 

"Now, allow me to ask another question, Septa Mordane." Cat said fiercely. "How long have you been reading the Lady Sansa's correspondence?"

 

"I've ever been concerned with the Lady Sansa's future, you know that, my lady!" Septa Mordane bit her lip and looked at her beseechingly. "You know I could not love Sansa more if she were of my own womb. Why I've said since she was born that she was the perfect lady. Fair as the dawn and so sweet. She was more courteous at three than many a wife is at three-and-twenty. Can you blame me for seeking to protect her?"

 

"Mother, I have Maester Luwin!" Sansa announced, breezing into the room with Lady at her side and the Maester's casket held in the arms of one of the guards who'd accompanied her back.

 

"Indeed, the Lady Sansa said that young Lord Rickon's wrist was badly twisted?" The Maester was all business as he came in, brisk and not even glancing at the Septa. The guard, on the other hand, glared silent murder from his pale Northern eyes.

 

"Lew!" Rickon caught sight of the Maester instantly, his eyes welling with tears as he thrust his hand out at the man who always came to him with medicine when he was sick. "Hurts! Make it better."

 

"Ah, I see. If I may?"

 

"Of course."

 

Reluctantly, Lady Catelyn passed the boy to the Maester, who set him upon the work table and began to talk to him in a low, gentle voice to warn him of everything he had to do as he began to very gently rotate the boy's wrist. She watched everything out of the corner of her eye, and was about to turn to the Septa again when the older woman preempted her by doing something else. Something, Cat decided, entirely  _ stupid _ .

 

"Lady Sansa, surely you realize that I meant no harm!" The Septa turned towards her favorite pupil. "I've ever guarded your honor and taught you to be a proper lady. I only read your letters out of worry for your safety. Who knew what-."

 

"Be silent!" Sansa bit out and Lady snarled beside her, prompting a look of surprise and a quick step to the side by the guard as he sat the casket of medical supplies on the table just out of Rickon's reach and moved to stand by the door.

 

"Lady Sansa!" The woman tried to scold, but Catelyn could see her daughter had gone quite beyond the point where she would accept that. "That is _no_ _way_ to address a Septa or your elder! Where are your manners?"

 

With a flare of pride in her daughter, Catelyn watched silently.

 

"I do not know, Septa Mordane, where are all of these _essential_ _lessons_ you taught me?" Sansa bit out. "My embroidery is flawless, my dancing master claims I move with sublime grace, I know precisely how to address every rank in the kingdom, and I can style my hair with flare and still be demure. Excellent, now how is that to help me balance my household accounts? Can floss and thread show me how to manage my husband's bannermen if I lose him in battle while my sons are too young to rule?"

 

The Septa opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by a sharp gesture from Sansa and a snarl from Lady as Cat's daughter went on.

 

"What have you taught me of growing crops, leading men, the law of the Seven Kingdoms, or the rights of lords and the nobility? I can quote my family tree back many generations and recognize the banners of the wealthiest houses South of the Neck, but what of my father's bannermen? I know only a handful of our banners, or did before I began to teach myself."

 

"My Lady Sansa, you don't need to know all of that." Septa Mordane managed to interject. "Your husband shall be a great lord and you will have servants to do such things."

 

"Things I've begun to learn at my  _ sister's _ urging, I might add, for Lyarra is who has written me faithfully, _ as I am sure you know, _ of all of her lessons in being a Princess." Sansa finished disdainfully. "What would you have me be? A lapdog, I would imagine."

 

"Starks are direwolves, m'lady, I don't think it'd suit." The guard spoke quietly and it was on the tip of Lady Stark's tongue to criticise him for speaking out of turn, but Sansa acted first.

 

Lady Stark watched, her heart near bursting with pride, as her daughter turned and, with great courtesy, offered a polite inclination of her head to the guard. Cat suddenly recognized his hoary head and beard and gray eyes from amongst the men who came to Riverrun all those years ago for her wedding. He was no bannermen, but he was loyal enough that Ned had left him to guard his family in his absence, and he was smiling at her daughter. The daughter who looked the least Stark amongst her children. Who he had just labeled with such pleasure as one of his own lord's kin.

 

"Thank you, Ellys."

 

"You're more than welcome, m'lady."

 

"Lady Stark, are you going to let her speak to a priestess of the Faith in such a way?" Septa Mordane demanded, her face red. "After my years of loyal service-."

 

"Loyal to whom, Septa?" Catelyn asked coldly, and adopted another angle to shake the woman’s confidence further. Truth or not, her words might shake something loose that was of use to her. "If you have indeed been secretly reading this family's correspondence for years, I must wonder if it has ever stopped with the children, and then there is your own admission that you write to speak with others outside of Winterfell of what your spying discovers."

 

" _ Spying _ ?" The woman paled and then her face reddened. "Lady Stark, it is not - I am no spy."

 

"Then you deny writing to the High Septon of goings on in Winterfell gleaned from reading my daughter's letters without her her permission."

 

"I - that is-," The woman began to splutter, "Lady Stark, it is the Faith's duty and their privilege to look into the souls of all men and guide them! You yourself must know that!"

 

"I know my duty better than most."  _ Family. Duty. Honor. _

 

"Then you must know how heartbroken the Faith has been, Lady Stark." The Septa shot back, apparently mistaking gravity for contrition and weakness. "You've lived here as the Lady of Winterfell for fifteen years now, and how many of these Northerners have you brought into the fold? They remain instead worshipping trees and uncouth spirits! They turn from the Faith, deny us our prerogatives, and now they've shamed us before the realm and weaken us by proclaiming we are somehow responsible for their ills and the Gods' judgement against them."

 

"I came to Winterfell long ago, foreign and afraid. That much is true, Septa Mordane."

 

Cat could all but hear her father's voice, whispering caution in her ear. She listened to it; his lessons had ever led her more wisely than her Septa's and Ellys' gray eyes were upon her as sharply as the amber eyes of Lady; both looked at her like the unearthly bleeding eyes of the Heart Tree. As every lady of every keep ever was when she came from home to her husband's House, Cat was being watched. Even with her father exonerated and her House free of the weirwood rumors, nothing would ever change that she wasn't of the North. Nothing would ever change that her father's shame in his treatment of Lysa had finally begun to drift north of the Neck and be spread about the bannermen. This, however, could change how they saw her. If it hurt like a wound, well, she need only look at the bruises on her son's wrist to justify ever word she spoke, or think of Robb's future.

 

"I never came to change anyone. I came to be a wife, a mother, and a lady." Cat went on. "The Sept you have worshipped beside me in is no boot planted on foreign ground to aid in conquering. It is a gift from a husband who cherishes the wife he loves. Nothing more, and nothing less."

 

Septa Mordane's face began to fall as she realized her mistake.

 

"Ellys, kindly escort Septa Mordane to her quarters. Septa, you are to pack your things immediately. As soon as my son is home and Lord Stark hears of this, I imagine he will concur with me; it is time for you to return to the fold in the Riverlands."

 

* * *

Since Lyarra had left Winterfell she'd had no more dreams of the crypts. She'd seen no more harsh-faced effigies telling her she did not belong. Mostly her dreams had been good. Some had been so wonderful. She didn't feel it wise to share the images of a toddling boy laughing in the sands of a beach as the bare sheen of dying waves racing over the shallows chased him. 

 

Oberyn was certain that they were to have a daughter, and likely right about his certainty given his history of fathering daughters. Lyarra didn't want to be mocked, even kindly, for her dreams.

She hadn't had any nightmares, even after Ser Edmure Tully's painful jape at her expense. At least not until she woke up in a heavy sweat, Oberyn's arms around her and the hard calluses of a warrior petting her face as he teased her out of a terrible dream. Then Lyarra's husband paid her back for what comfort she'd offered him on the approach to King's Landing, when his nightmares had been at their fiercest with a tender kiss to draw her further from her dreams.

 

"Whatever you dreamt, it will not come to pass."

 

The first words out of her husband's mouth were quiet and fierce. His protection was not feigned. Nor was the fondness that drove it. Lyarra pressed her face into his chest and groaned.

 

"You cannot reassure me of that."

 

"Tell me what you dreamt and then I shall be the judge of that."

 

Oberyn didn't talk about his nightmares. Lyarra debated it for a moment and decided she would speak. Talking to Gwyn always helped, but Gwyn was not her husband and she was no longer a girl to give her confidences to others. Oberyn was her husband, and if Lady Catelyn had given her no other good advice, she'd given her some in parting.

 

_ "You will receive from your husband the trust you give him. Treat him as the man you want, be the wife he needs, and he will rise in your esteem as you conquer his." _

 

"It was all a jumble." Lyarra confessed. "I don't remember it well."

 

"But?"

 

" _ But… _ " Lyarra sighed at his prompting and went on. "The King died and the Crown Prince took the Iron Throne… Father… I saw his head atop the battlements here."

 

She could barely speak through the way her throat closed up and his grip on her became tighter, but more soothing for it.

 

"That will not happen. If anything, the Crown wishes to tie the North closer to them. To harm your father, or any of your kin, would do the opposite. Even the wretched Old Lion himself wants no war."

 

"You cannot predict what a mad man will do. Just look at the scorched floor in the Great Hall beneath the Iron Throne if you need proof." Lyarra scoffed, her voice harsher than normal, and immediately regretted she'd said it. "I'm sorry, Oberyn. No-one needs less proof of Aerys' madness or what it cost than your family."

 

"Nor yours…" Oberyn replied, kissing her hair in the pitch-darkness of their bedchamber. It had no windows, the fire was unlit, and Lyarra found herself as comforted by the darkness as by his embrace. "I ignore it, for your father has long been a source of fury for me and I am a wrathful man, but the fact remains. The war started for us when we heard of Rhaegar's idiocy with your aunt and mine Uncle rode South to gather our forces under King Scab's threat to my sister, but the war started for the North when Rickard Stark burned in his armor."

 

Lyarra breathed out then, and spread her hands flat against her husband's chest, resting her head against him. She counted the rise and fall of their chests. The even beat of his heart lulled hers into slowing.

 

"I dreamt of chaos." Lyarra admitted quietly. "Just…  _ chaos _ , and war everywhere. No one knew who was King and everyone seemed to have a King of their own. Terrible things happened to my family."

 

"Ah…" Oberyn breathed out slowly and was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke again, his tone was sad. "I would promise you that you were safe from such things, darling, but I do not like to lie."

 

Lyarra shuddered.

 

"Bad kings do not make for stability. Mad kings destroy it."

 

"I'm afraid." Lyarra admitted quietly. "The King is… he's not a healthy man."

 

"He's grossly fat, he drinks as much as five normal drunks, and he's recklessly miserable and taunting allies and enemies alike?"

 

"Yes,  _ that _ ."

 

"Lord Arryn is old."

 

"Nine-and-seventy."

 

"That old?" Lyarra leaned back in his arms to see his face, upset. "I had thought him perhaps ten years less than that."

 

"He is hale for his age, and unbent, but he was of an age with my father, and when I was born, my father was around the age I will be when our little one is born." Oberyn agreed solemnly. "Nor is the King particularly good for his Hand's health. Then, of course, there are matters in the Vale. His honor demands he return to his own lands and settle the succession soon, and in person. A wiser man would make his decision here, proclaim it, and then return."

 

"Why?" Lyarra frowned.

 

"Tell me." Oberyn prompted and Lyarra paused, settling into his arms.

 

Such lessons were more common in Lady Jynessa or Lady Myria's company. Of the time they'd had together Lyarra had spent most of it in her husband's company simply coming to know her husband. They'd slowly spoken of their families, they'd learned their likes and dislikes. Lyarra was slightly embarrassed as to how much of their time was spent in lovemaking, but she was growing less bothered by that in comparison to others. The abject misery of the royal couple, for instance, and the growing awareness and happiness she felt at the thought of being a mother were both good lessons in how and why to appreciate what the Gods had gifted her with.

 

"You cannot think Jon Arryn in danger from his _own_ _people_?" Lyarra asked quietly and Oberyn breathed out.

 

"No entire realm is honorable, Lyarra."

 

"The Vale has the very best reputation."

 

"And Dorne has the worst, should you believe that as well?"

 

Lyarra paused and chewed on that for a moment, blushing and shaking her head.

 

"That was naive of me."

 

"Ah, well, you're young." Oberyn chuckled self-deprecatingly. "You're naive, but working to correct it. I was monstrous but time had beaten most of that out of me."

 

" _ Most _ ." Lyarra drawled and felt her husband grin against her temple as they lay together.

 

"We're all slaves to our natures, Lyarra, we can only improve them so much. Besides, it makes us well balanced, does it not? You're altogether too kind and honorable? I'm a licentious cad with a habit of doing monstrous things to those who offend me. Mayhaps the Gods do know what they are doing. They've ever blessed my life with women far better than I deserve."

 

A hint of sadness touched her through their Marks and Lyarra knew he thought of his sister, the daughter he'd lost to the Plague, and Ellaria Sand. Though she was grateful to have her husband, her heart hurt for him. She couldn't blame a man more than twice her age for loving before, and she was sorry to see almost anyone suffer.

 

If lightning were to strike Prince Joffrey, though, Lyarra wouldn't object.

 

"You really think one of the Vale Lords might kill their own Lord Paramount?" She brought herself to ask and he shook his head.

 

"An ambitious father, mother - Hells, even an ambitious Septa with a special favorite or a Maester with goals of his own might do it. They're all human, and humanity has its vices. A lust for power and control is one of the worst, and it shows itself in many forms." He spoke, and added a bit that made her wonder again how close their Marks bound them. "Even the Crown Prince suffers from it. He thirsts for his father's recognition, but he also wants all to bow before him. He wants his boots licked, he wants acclaim he's not rightfully earned, and he feels powerful when he is torturing or being cruel to others. I've seen this sickness before often enough."

 

Lyarra shivered.

 

"Only a couple of holds in the North were really struck hard by the plague. One was the Dreadfort." She spoke quietly. "None of the clans would trade with Lord Bolton because they claimed his bastard son was hunting peasant girls with hounds, or torturing peasants he'd taken to his mother's mill."

 

"And what did your father do in regards to this?"

 

"He road North with the goats himself and investigated." Lyarra explained. "By the time he got there, Ramsay Snow was all gone to stone, along with his mother, and Lord Bolton claimed he had no knowledge of his son's actions and there was no proof he'd known. He took the heads off of the other men implicated in his son's actions with his own sword and paid restitution to the families… but Father likely refused his offer for my hand on that alone."

 

"I see. I'm beginning to regret deciding not to poison his leeches. Ser Domeric, if I recall, was _deeply_ _saddened_ that he would never meet his natural brother."

 

"I'm not." Lyarra snorted, shivering, then feeling her husband's surprise corrected her meaning. "I'm not sad Ser Domeric shall never meet his brother, but I am a little sad you didn't poison Roose Bolton in some way that couldn't be detected. Domeric's a good man and fine knight, but I fear that anyone so foul as Ramsay Snow was said to be, would have seen it just as a way to murder and usurp him. Yet  _ another _ justification, I might add, for Lady Catelyn's views on bastards."

 

"No-one can detect my poisons unless I choose for them to do so." Oberyn stated haughtily, but seemed pleased. "I believe I am corrupting you. Two moons ago you could have likely told me poison was no honorable weapon."

 

"A moon ago, I had not met House Frey, seen a King my father calls brother staggering drunk, nor heard any of Gwyn's tales of the Rock."

 

Oberyn hummed his agreement and the hand on her back slid down to cup her ass. His breathing sped up and Lyarra leaned into their next kiss. It was long, and she pulled back to breath as he hummed his satisfaction against her breasts.

 

"Such dark speech we have this morning. Mayhaps a distraction would better serve."

 

Lyarra considered it, but the dream of her father's head mounted on a spike caused her to shiver and the bare embers Oberyn had awoken hissed and died quickly.

 

"Or not." Her husband groaned a little and shifted, sitting up and pulling her with him. "Well, as we are both awake, let us call for some broth and thin toast to settle your stomach before it rebels, and a warm bath for the both of us."

 

"Hot bath." Lyarra corrected.

 

Expecting to long for the cool north, as her pregnancy progressed, Lyarra was finding she longed for heat instead. The warm air of the south settled pleasantly in her bones. She barely sweated even when her father and sister were miserable, and she was coming to search out warm places in the sun for naps.

 

"You're with child, hot baths are not healthy. I am beginning to have hope that you will not melt in Dorne, though."

 

Lyarra pouted as her husband struck flint to steel and lit a candle in their windowless bedchamber. Once she'd gotten her dressing robe on and made sure her husband was wearing his and not simply venturing out bare arse naked as was his wont if she didn't watch him, they went out into the solar. Gwyn was, as she anticipated, already awake, dressed, and waiting for them. Walda had apparently been forced out of her bed as well, but she'd fallen asleep again on the settee, fully dressed.

 

"Ravens came." Gwyn announced with a grin and held one already unfolded up to the light of the candle branch she was sitting beside. "Bran wrote, letters came from the Neck, and there were some from Winterfell as well."

 

They were not using the Red Keep's ravenry. One of the first things Gwyn had told them, days before they'd reached King's Landing and after Lyarra and Oberyn had made up from their fight about his never telling her how… certain things they shared were being overheard by everyone in camp, was that the Grand Maester was a Lannister creature. That hadn't been a surprise to either Lord Stark or Oberyn, who had both known that Pycelle was who had convinced the Mad King to open the gates so that Lord Tywin could enter the city during the Rebellion. Lord Stark had been slightly surprised and overwhelmingly disgusted to find out just how much of a creature of the Lannisters that the man was. Maesters took oaths that the mail their ravens carried was private and inviolate, but that meant little to the man who handled the King's correspondence.

 

As it was, their mail was going in and out of a small ravenry a young Maester in the city ran. The man was much more honest, and would stay bribed even if he was not. So far all their mail had gone through his small office and the ravenry behind it near the docks.

 

" _ Give _ !" Lyarra demanded, then wished she hadn't stepped forward so quickly as he stomach lurched.

 

Oberyn noticed and guided her to a chair, retrieving her letters and setting their candle beside her as Gwyn rose. Lyarra sighed when she saw a small covered crock set amidst the coals of the small fire on the solar's hearth. There was also a pair of wooden trenchers set atop each other in a kind of dome, and Gwyn overturned it to reveal fruit and bread, already sliced. Taking up a fork, she set about toasting some bread with the fork's handle pinned in the fold her her knee, tucked around her skirts, and spooned some broth into a bowl for Lyarra.

 

Oberyn lit another branch of candles. Walda woke up at the noise and rubbed her eyes before rising to curtsey to the prince. He nodded politely, yawned behind his hand, idly asked forgiveness for his rudeness, and then wandered back to sit beside Lyarra on a chair on the other side of the small table holding the bandle branch. He had his own bundle of letters to attend to and Lyarra noticed it was much larger than her own.

 

She impatiently put her letters aside, resting a hand on her belly to silently tell her baby to calm down and stop making her feel like she needed to reintroduce her dinner from the night before to the world. While she was working on the broth and toast Gwyn provided, Oberyn related a few items from his mail.

 

"Dorea and Loreza are both delighted to know they will have a baby sister." Oberyn related, a broad smile on his face but his black eyes longing. "You have risen in their eyes for having so generously offered to provide one, but they find the long wait for her arrival tiresome. Obara's last letter was more curious about Arya than ever, and I fear I will not have control of your sister's training for long when she discovers another girl as passionate as she is on the subject of war."

 

"At five-and-twenty are you really lumping the Lady Obara together with Ayra as a girl?" Gwyn asked curiously.

 

"To fathers, their daughters will always be little girls." Oberyn replied with a chuckle. "Just ask Lord Stark of the look he gave me when I told him he was to be a grandfather.  _ Lord Uller _ embraced me every time I told him I was to make him a grandfather, and I'd not wed his daughter, let alone been Marked and provided alliance and bride price."

 

"The world is terribly unfair to you, Prince Oberyn." Gwyn observed piously.

 

"I know, my good spirits in the face of it is one of my best qualities."

 

Lyarra snorted as she dipped her toast in the broth and her husband shot her a smile before he tucked away the letter of wandering and uneven script sent from the youngest of the Sand Snakes, likely under the close eye of their Septa.

 

"Obara only wrote an addendum on Nymeria's letter. I'm heartbroken." Oberyn muttered more to himself than anyone else and Walda, amused, put a plate with a sliced pear, some sliced melon, and a thin wedge of sharp cheese at his elbow. He didn't seem to really notice, but began eating anyway. Walda grinned at Lyarra and went out to order bathwater.  _ "What?!" _

 

Lyarra jumped, nearly spilling her broth on herself at her husband's shocked hiss.

 

"Oberyn, is something wrong?"

 

"That upstart, Ser Atanas Manwoody is asking for 'Lia's hand again!" Oberyn sprang up out of his chair, his teeth bared in sudden temper. "I refused him  _ personally _ ere I left. My daughter is no older than the Lady Sansa. In Dorne she cannot even legally wed for two years yet, and he presses me for a betrothal without even speaking to my daughter. Then, while I am out of Sunspear, he seeks to go to Doran  _ behind my back _ ? As if I would let him, the amoral upstart! I'll carve him to  _ pieces _ when I return!"

 

"I had thought House Manwoody was a good and loyal House?" Lyarra was surprised by his outburst.

 

"The main line, yes, they are some of my brother's most loyal bannermen." Oberyn replied, pacing in front of the windows with wide, angry gestures that made the candle flames dance. "Atanas is several generations removed from the seat and it is questionable if he has the right to use the family name at all. Were Lord Dagos not of such generous spirit he'd have made the man cease years ago, but he doesn't wish to do harm to his kin. As though the ass does not do enough himself!"

 

"Why do you dislike him so?"

 

"Personally?" Oberyn sneered. "He is a grasping man. His father knighted him, but had no land to give him for Ser Atanas was from his first marriage and his father came into land himself only by marrying a lord's widow in the Stormlands. From there, Ser Atanas followed in his father's footsteps and came back to Dorne, where he married Ser Trystane Redclay's widow. A lovely woman old enough to be my mother."

 

Gwyn coughed and it sounded a great deal like the words 'pot' and 'kettle' mashed together. Oberyn paused and looked at Lyarra and pinched the bridge of his nose.

 

"Lyarra, you are joy to me, darling, but if you'd been a decade older would we both not be more comfortably suited?"

 

"Having never been a decade older, I cannot say." Lyarra answered, working to make her voice pert just to see her husband begin to look worried that he'd vexed her, then she grinned. "We didn't seek each other, though I'm happy with the Gods' will, Oberyn, and we wanted to take nothing from each other. It's different."

 

Oberyn looked a bit uncomfortable at her unconcerned reply, so Lyarra went on.

 

"I had always assumed to wed a man older than me. Most girls do, and as a bastard I had less choice than most." Lyarra assured him. "I wanted an established husband, anyway, for the security. Mayhaps not one older than my father, but at least you have held up well."

 

Gwyn's strangled laughter told Lyarra that she might have gone a little too far with the blunt honesty she'd been raised with. Oberyn was pinching his nose again. This time, however, his lips turned up slightly at the corners.

 

"Doran is going to insist that you were chosen for by the Gods for the good you are going to do my ego, Lyarra."

 

"I'll take that as a compliment."

 

"Indeed, as I was saying? If it were but their ages, I would have only one thing to complain of. The Lady Redclay had only a single grandson left alive, however, to be Heir to her husband's lands. The boy was squired to Ser Atanas and within half a year of her death, word was received in Sunspear that the ten-year-old ran afoul of one the more common sorts of viper during a hunting trip with his stepfather. As the Redclay line is ended, can you guess who Dornish law dictates inherits?"

 

"There was no proof of foul play?" Lyarra frowned at the implication.

 

"The boy had been most carefully embalmed by the time I arrived to investigate for mine brother." Oberyn came back and threw himself into his chair, setting that letter aside. "Thankfully Lia's well watched by her sisters and Doran. He's making a new grasp at power, and sees her as a good way to do it. She is a daughter of the lists, but 'Lia is haughty and holds herself as lady."

 

"She is also the eldest of Lord Uller's grandchildren." Lyarra frowned as her own militantly instilled lessons on the Houses of Dorne itched at the back of her mind; Gwyn beamed at her as she said it while Oberyn stopped and a slow smile spread across his face.

 

"You're quite right, darling, something I imagine was much on Ser Atanas' mind, though not in the way it would have been were he a wiser man." Oberyn's grin was all fang and satisfied stillness and he came over and planted a passionate kiss on her mouth. "I will write to Lord Uller directly. He will  _ enjoy _ handling this himself."

 

"Ser Ulwyck will be vexed."

 

"He can't kill everyone himself." Oberyn declared merrily as he retook his seat and applied himself to his other letters. "Or, rather, he cannot, if  _ I _ cannot. Fair is fair."

 

Lyarra laughed at her husband's casual bloodthirstiness, feeling that she shouldn't but unable to stop herself from her fondness for him. It was growing easier to love the strange, complex man every day. Hearing him happily tell other tales of his daughters, gleaned from the letters, made it easier still. Mayhaps the Gods wished to repay House Stark's debts for not saving or avenging the Princess Elia and her children, but a tiny part of Lyarra's heart was also beginning to think that they'd just wished to do her a kindness as well. Who better to treat a bastard as a princess than the Red Viper?

 

Lyarra read and shared her own letters. Ser Brynden's training was grueling, but her brother was ever dedicated and excited about every aspect of being a squire. Likewise, he touched the edges of the fact that he was now apparently giving the Blackfish gray hairs with his climbing as they made their way north. Apparently Ser Brynden hadn't believed Bran's claims of skill in the area and had woken up the next morning to find his squire hollering at him from atop the tallest fir tree near their camp.

 

The resulting punishment of armor polishing and scrubbing pots and pans had been useless and Lyarra snickered as she recalled that Gwyn had dragged Bran and Arya down to the scullery to do just that more than once when they'd attempted to steal from the kitchens without her knowing. Gwyn was, after all, very generous in the way of caged snacks, but would become extremely tetchy if she thought you were caging them from her domain without her express permission.

 

Sansa's warmth and delight over becoming an aunt made Lyarra sniffle a bit, and she had to share it. What followed revealed, yet again, that her husband was more knowledgeable than almost any man Lyarra had known when it came to babes. He had ready answers to all of Sansa's questions about how babes were clothed and swaddled in the Dornish heat.

 

"So I trust my child will end up with wolves embroidered on their garments and blankets?" Oberyn looked amused as he glanced at where Ghost had come over and placed herself beneath Lyarra's feet.

 

"Yes, but likely snakes as well." Lyarra grinned. "She's expressed a delight in embroidering snakes; they're so  _ easy _ . Though it seems she needs more red thread now."

 

"Your bride price will be going north in shipments for months yet." Oberyn observed. "Silk is far cheaper in Dorne. When we return home, we will send gifts North with the next shipment."

 

"That sounds wonderful." Lyarra grinned, genuinely touched by his consideration and then gasped as she read further.

 

"What?"

 

"Lad- Lady Stark has  _ dismissed _ Septa Mordane!" Lyarra couldn't believe what she was reading, then her outrage took over. "She's been reading Sansa's mail for who knows how long, and the Gods alone know if she's been reading anyone else's. Then - she's been spying for the High Septon!"

 

"But of course." Oberyn replied sarcastically. "How else are they to plot against the Old Gods? Why, there's nearly half of Westeros above the Neck, and they don't get tithes from anyof it. Even the Manderlys stopped tithing after a generation or two out of the Reach."

 

Lyarra found her lips moving before she could stop them, and the string of words that emerged was foul, incredibly obscene, and had been obligingly taught her by the only squid in Winterfell.

 

" _ Such _ language!" Oberyn laughed, delighted. "You have hidden depths, darling."

 

Lyarra glared at him in answer, then went on reading.

 

"At least she's been sent away. Robb packed her up and had her out of the keep by the morning after she'd revealed herse-  _ that bitch _ ." Lyarra hissed. "She sprained Rickon's wrist when he saw her reading Sansa's letters and tried to take them! Oh, if I had been there she'd have gotten worse than some torn skirts and a tongue-lashing. Ghost has not Lady's manners and I would have had her hands off with a carving knife for touching my baby brother."

 

"Should we ever meet her again, I volunteer to hold the guards at bay while you do so." Oberyn's humor fled and he leaned across, pushing the candles forward, to read over her shoulder. "Is he well?"

 

"Yes, he'll be fine. My poor little wolf." Lyarra muttered darkly and swatted at her husband. "Stop that, it's rude."

 

"Then tell me what the letter says and I shall not have to take advantage of your lack of height to do so."

 

"I'm not  _ that _ short. Nor am I done with Sansa's letter yet. Read your own brother's letter. You shouldn't relegate your Prince to last anyway."

 

"He would be wroth with me himself were I to put him before mine daughters." Oberyn shot back, but complied and sat back to open Prince Doran's seal while she kept reading her own letter.

 

"Well… that's one thing to be relieved for." Lyarra sighed as she finished her sister's letter. "Robb told her of the Prince of Tongues, though he doesn’t say in what detail."

 

"The - hah! Yes, a good name for the mad princling." Oberyn approved. "He did not spare her? Your sister is a sheltered girl."

 

" _ Too _ sheltered, if she's to be wed in the next few years." Lyarra shook her head and relaxed as she read on. "But she's doing so well. She writes that she's been given charge of the kitchens, and if she doesn't cook as you do, Gwyn, she's managing them to Lady Stark's satisfaction."

 

"That's good." Gwyn agreed. "If you can run a kitchen, you can run a house."

 

Lyarra hummed and kept reading.

 

"Still… Sansa is horrified, and even more than that? She disdains what else we've wrote of him." Lyarra was entirely relieved. "A boy who looks much like a girl with golden curls and a spoiled manner, draped in silks, is not how she pictures princes anymore."

 

"Truly?" Oberyn grinned smugly. "And how does she picture them?"

 

Lyarra sighed and decided he deserved a little ego stroking.

 

"Apparently they are well-read, capable as any Maester, and can carry their brides over a league of ground to their wedding feast."

 

"A  _ fine _ image to hold for a proper prince." Oberyn radiated smugness.

 

Gwyn rolled her eyes and continued sitting by her own candle, mouthing words as she worked her way through Bran's letter, then Robb's and one from Theon. Lyarra finished reading Sansa's letter. Then she turned to Robb's. She'd have opened it first, but she was so worried that Sansa would write her heartbroken and angry, that she'd never forgive her for turning Lady Stark against the idea of Sansa one day being a queen.

 

"Robb's done well and met many of father's bannermen and the weirwood survey is near done." She observed happily. "Oh, and they found a large stand in Clan Wull's territory that they weren't even aware of. One with many saplings, so they'll be able to safely send a dozen more South."

"That will please everyone."

 

"It will, Oberyn, very much. I'll have to speak to Father. Lady Olenna asked after helping their peasantry with their new godswoods and Lord Renly as well."

 

"You're a generous soul, Wife." Oberyn observed and frowned at his own letter, then opened another and began comparing them.

 

"Oberyn?"

 

"Tell me your news, first. Is it all good?"

 

"Yes." Lyarra allowed, suddenly worried. "Robb has several bannermen's sons who have come to Winterfell with him. They'll leave on his next journey and accompany him as he continues to work on the Winter Survey. Then there's Moat Cailin. Since Father wants to break ground on it as soon as he goes north, Robb is going to gather and organize a small group to do the surveying first. He's very excited for it, as is Bran, and there are other good things. Besides Septa Mordane being gone, Lady Stark had begun to encourage all of them to pray more in the Godswood. Gods… who knew the world was so pleasant when turned upside down? Next the Lady Stark will write  _ me _ a kind letter."

 

"The bannermen will like all of that, though I wouldn't count on the letter." Gwyn added. "Theon says the same, and he's even made friends with the Smalljon and Lord Keavan Forrester on his own as well."

 

"That's good, Theon needs more friends than just us." Lyarra agreed, and kept summarizing the letter. "Greywind is growing well, as are Shaggy and Lady. The three of them took down an elk on their own! That's impressive."

 

Oberyn hummed, and his shoulders relaxed in relief.

 

"Now, tell me your news." Lyarra prompted.

 

Oberyn paused for a long moment, then went on with a surprisingly tired expression on his face. The flare of barely relieved worry bothered Lyarra more than that, however, and she got up to go stand by her husband. She quickly found herself pulled into his lap.

 

"This is not to leave this room."

 

Gwyn and Lyarra were quick to agree.

 

"My brother, the Prince, had to have his knee drained. It has happened before, as a product of his gout, but it is an incredibly painful procedure and as he ages the risk of infection grows." Oberyn allowed. "He had it done without telling Quentyn, but thankfully it went well and he is recovered and in better comfort now. It merely pains me not to be there to support my brother, and that he cannot return to the Water Garden where his gout torments him less."

 

Lyarra felt her heart constrict, for it was their marriage that had taken him away from Dorne and supporting his brother. Though everyone in the North talked mostly of how they had fought when Doran had refused to go to war after the Rebellion, Lyarra knew of the deep love that Oberyn had for all of his family. He was not Doran's strong right hand for nothing.

 

"We will not be here long." Lyarra replied, soothingly.

 

"No, we shall not." Oberyn agreed, then looked at Gwyn for a tense moment before turning away and rubbing a hand over his face. Gwyn spoke quietly into the silence.

 

"He won't come."

 

"Hmm, who?"

 

"The - the other Name you want. The man who killed your sister and your nephew. I've - I… I looked into it. He's not coming to King's Landing." Gwyn spoke through a thick throat, swallowing loudly as Oberyn's head snapped up. "You… He'll have to be killed later. Likely in the Westerlands."

 

" _ Ah… _ " Oberyn said quietly and fell silent for some moments. Lyarra could feel him grappling with himself. Eventually his hand snaked around to curl over Lyarra's belly. "Then it would be some moons before I could make such a trip in secrecy."

 

"Not to mention the difficulty in hiding you in a kingdom where more than half the people are some shade between wheat and auburn and the rest are brown-headed." Gwyn huffed, her mind immediately going to technical things. "You'd look ridiculous if we put lemon juice in your hair to lighten it."

 

That entirely serious observation produced a rough bark of laughter from her husband.

 

"I am forced to agree, and my vanity thanks you for not seriously considering it." He allowed, running his hands through his short, neat hair and touching his neatly trimmed, brief beard. "Well, there is Lorch. If he comes, I shall have Rhaenys' revenge. The rest… we shall settle. You are not giving me another name today, then?"

 

"Soon." Gwyn said earnestly in a way she almost never spoke save to Lyarra herself, then paused, then spoke again. "I trust you, Your Grace.  _ Soon _ , I promise."

 

Oberyn watched for a long moment, then nodded in acknowledgement.

 

Gwyn seemed both relieved and satisfied by that, and Lyarra felt herself relax slightly as well. She hadn't been raised so that murderers could walk free. Those who would harm a child were the worst of the lot, and to drag a screaming girl no older than Rickon from under her father's bed and slaughter her as Amory Lorch had… Were Lyarra not with child, she'd volunteer to help.

 

"And Doran is well." Oberyn spoke quietly, reassuring himself as he glanced down at the letters again, his attention drawing back to them.

 

Lyarra found herself finishing the rest of her letters and nibbling at a slice of melon as she sat with her husband. He hadn't relinquished his grip on her, so she remained in his lap. Likewise Gwyn pottered about, doing whatever it was she liked to do, and Lyarra noticed that a little potted violet was now resting on the window sill. Inquiry proved it was Walda's acquisition.

It was as Walda and their servants were setting up the large cedar bath and its canvas draperies that an unfamiliar servant arrived. Oberyn, being awful, received the message from the servant in his dressing robe himself. Lyarra tried not to be amused as his antics while she let Gwyn help her wash and oil her hair, then begin the frustrating process of patting the heavy mass of curls dry.

 

Her husband walked into the dressing room where Lyarra was bathing with a serious expression on his face and his lips twisted in disgust.

 

"The Queen  _ must _ have you attend her this afternoon for an entertainment in the Queen's ballroom. The ladies of the court will all be in attendance, at the Queen's demand." Oberyn informed her as he leaned against a wall and watched her bathe.

 

Gwyn shot him a glare, but seemed too preoccupied by what he said to make it stick; not that it ever did anything but encourage the incorrigible man. Lyarra felt a little ill herself, despite having filled her stomach to the amount that left her and the babe most comfortable. She took a deep breath and steadied herself.

 

"Well, it was inevitable."

 

"You will have to watch all that you eat and drink even more closely." Gwyn fretted. "She'll have dozens of her cronies about this time, and she'll be looking to humiliate you if she can't harm you."

 

"I wish I knew why. It's not as if I chose for the King to act so towards her or towards me!" Lyarra complained and Oberyn shook his head.

 

"The petty and miserable lash out at those they think are weak. She can't do anything about the King. She can try and reduce you to make herself feel larger."

 

"It's more than that." Gwyn interrupted quietly, licking her lips and going on. Her hands barely shook, but she was pale around her lips. "If the Prince gets his sickness of mind from anyone, it's his mother. The Queen is not reasonable when she's angry, and she fancies that ruthlessness and errant cruelty are the same thing. Ser Kevan once said she thought herself Tywin with teats, but that she's not so clever as she believes and is reckless in all of the wrong ways."

 

"Can you give us an example?" Oberyn asked.

 

"Yes." Gwyn breathed out and swallowed. "I was there when the King's party visited, it - it is likely what so distracted Lady Genna from paying me any mind the last few months I was there. She had to manage the royal entourage while Lord Tywin managed the King."

 

"What did the Queen do?" Lyarra asked, anticipating a thousand ways the Queen could make a girl she so outranked miserable.

 

"She paid the father of a girl in the laundry who the King got with child to drown the babes when they were born."

 

" _ What _ ?" Lyarra breathed in shock.

 

Surely Gwyn was mistaken.

 

"It's  _ not _ a rumor, Lyarra." Gwyn said quietly, but fiercely. "When she got with child, Lord Arryn sent her down into Lannisport and bought her a boarding house to keep. A fortnight before I came north the King's party left. Three days before I left, the laundress - her name was Hanna - was brought back to the keep by her father. There a pair of knights the Queen had also paid held Hanna while her father took her newborn twin sons and drowned them in the washing tubs she'd used when she worked at the keep. Then she was taken down and sold to an Ironborn captain and her father took the boarding house and turned it into a tavern."

 

" _ Lannisters _ ." Oberyn breathed, his tone venomous. "Have I not told you, Lyarra? There is nothing they won't sink to."

 

" _ Oberyn _ ." Lyarra cut in, turning to look at Gwyn.

 

"Lannisters of the Rock, I should say?" Oberyn offered only for Gwyn to look up from where she'd turned to stare down at her feet; her blue eyes were sharp.

 

"Oh, no, we're  _ all _ a desperate,  _ bad _ lot, my Prince, even those of us with other names. Lann the Clever spread his seed wide, but some traits carry true and not just the golden hair." Gwyn's lips ticked up in a small, cold smile. "Some of us just have standards."

 

Oberyn snorted and inclined his head. Gwyn went back to toweling off Lyarra's hair. Lyarra rose from the bath and got her own towel. It was a testament to her husband's disgust that he had no reaction at all to her nude body.

 

"You are sure this is no rumor?" Oberyn asked.

 

"Yes." Gwyn replied firmly. "Lord Kevan found out just as I left. I think it's half of why he let me go with no inquiry. It made for one less problem. He quietly beheaded Hanna's father for kinslaying. I heard he even made inquiries about the Ironborn captain, but he'd already left and Lord Tywin bid his brother to do nothing else lest someone ask why outside the Rock. Servants never carry tales beyond its walls, though they speak of them readily enough inside them."

 

"You do."

 

"As I told Lady Stark, Your Grace, I am no-one's pet and I serve who I choose."

 

They all fell silent as Oberyn drifted over to the clothing trunks and looked inside. Frowning he leaned against the wall and withdrew one of Lyarra's plainest, most comfortable, light linen dresses. He did the same with smallclothes.

 

"We will spend this morning going over how to detect common poisons and medicines that one might use to harm a child in the womb." He decided. "We will wait until Walda returns from her own bath, and Lady Arya can run down and tell the dancing master she's so devoted to that she must either miss today's lesson or reschedule it so she can be included as well. I will even ask your father to join, if he has the time."

 

"Father will scowl, but he'll thank you." Lyarra sighed in relief.

 

Lord Stark disapproved of poisons as a weapon. He did, however, approve of prudence in most situations. Another thought occurred to her.

 

"Oberyn, should we tell the King or father of what the Queen did?" She asked, nervously. "I - she  _ murdered _ his children."

 

"Children who he would never bother to raise. One wonders how many bastards the Queen has killed that Lord Arryn hasn't managed to make arrangements for, or never knew existed."

 

Oberyn's voice was filled with scorn for the King, but he breathed out in thought. It was the father in his eyes that was calculating an answer, and a large part of that was made up of his feelings rather than his mind. Gwyn was who answered first.

 

"No. I don't think we should. What could he do and how could it be proven? Hanna's father's dead, Gods alone know where she's been sent to suffer, and all of Twyin's people or those beholden to him will deny it out of fear of their lord." Gwyn shook her head. "Anyone would claim it was just you being petty, Prince Oberyn."

 

"Because anyone would believe such filth of a foul poisoner such as myself." Oberyn allowed, his tone bitter before he breathed out. "Well, then we shall concentrate on making ourselves safe in the woman's presence. I would prefer to be there with you…"

 

"But it's likely not possible." Lyarra finished and shook her head. "If I can't stand alone as your wife here, I'll never be able to. It will be used against me for the rest of my life."

 

"Precisely." Oberyn agreed sourly at the same moment Gwyn did.

 

The prince and the young lady looked at each other for a moment before Gwyn looked up at him.

 

"Which one of us is the bad influence?"

 

"You are, of course, Lady Gwyn. My reputation has ever been a pristine thing, you know."

 

"Good, I would hate to give up my title as a friend of bastards and a constant source of grief and insubordinate behavior." Gwyn said with false earnestness. "I worked so hard to earn it from Lady Stark."

 

In the midst of her disgust and worry Lyarra managed to laugh.

 

* * *

"You've gotten no sleep, I see." Tywin observed sharply as he looked at his youngest, unwanted son. "You are aware we have a Small Council meeting in two hours?"

 

"I'm aware."

 

Tyrion looked up from a desk of scraps of paper and letters and scrolls. Four huge ledgers, mostly blank, stood in front of him open to various pages early in their bindings. The Imp blinked his mismatched eyes up at his Twyin blearily.

 

"What progress have you made?" Tywin took a seat in front of his son's desk.

 

"I am approximately thirty-six hours closer to working myself to death, and have learned that the Faith is lying through their teeth. Since the brigands burnt Littlefinger's books I've received twelve different accountings of the Crown's debt to the Faith. The High Septon sent one correction, his head secretary sent me another, and the others all come from various other figures in the priesthood I asked after. So far only three of these estimates agree with each other."

 

Tywin scowled in disgust. It was one thing to wish to be repaid for your generosity. It was another to foolishly and transparently attempt to steal from another.

 

"King's Landing is a seething mass of corruption and I do not believe anyone has monitored the Crownlands properly since the Rebellion."

 

"If you're referring to the taxes and gathering there-of, I've made a painful discovery." The dwarf groaned.

 

"What?"

 

"Father, while the detailed records are lost I have found a fair amount of general record keeping and odds and ends. If my estimates prove correct for the kingdom at large, the Crown is collecting less than an  _ eighth _ of the taxes it did under Aerys."

 

Tywin was momentarily struck dumb by the ridiculousness of Tyrion's statement.

 

"How did you come to that conclusion. We've been ten years in Summer, Tyrion. The Iron Throne's revenue should never have been higher."

 

" _ Should _ have, yes." Tyrion agreed before his mismatched eyes began to glint brightly, his apparent exhaustion banished. "You know the King disdains _ 'counting coppers'. _ Well, that extends to allowing the tax collectors the authority to do their jobs. I've years of complaints by various Counters before me of this or that lord who paid next to nothing or half or some other measurement of their proper taxes. Any complaints to the King were ignored, all it took was some fine words or a tearful and comely daughter begging the King for understandingof her family's situation and the whole matter was forgiven. This has been true in all of the Seven Kingdoms."

 

"I am hearing of this only now?" Tywin demanded more than questioned and Tyrion shot him a wry look.

 

"Do you really think any of our bannermen would come to you recalling how you enforced the Mad King's tax codes and bring to your attention that the Crown was allowing them to shaft him because the King both refused to be bothered and preferred to be liked and feted than insist on running the realm wisely? Even Jon Arryn can't move him on the subject!"

 

Memories of his own father danced before Tywin's eyes. He banished them harshly. Instead he sat forward.

 

"How much is owed?"

 

"I have no idea. Perhaps more than enough to pay off the debt he owes us, the Faith, and at least some of the Iron Bank." Tyrion allowed and then sat back and threw his hand up. "Or, possibly, somewhat less. I don't know and will not know until I have had more time to track down the individual counters and demand their private records. King Robert went through them at a rate of four per year before Littlefinger became Master of Coin, and his man has vanished somewhere in Braavos, the last I heard."

 

"Braavos is not Asshai." Twyin replied stiffly. "I will have the man found and returned to answer for the state of things. What of the others?"

 

"Some are dead, others are not. I've sent out ravens summoning them to court with all of their records."

 

"Good." Tywin looked at the sea of paper on the desk. "You will not be coming to the council meeting. Continue this."

 

"Yes, Father." Tyrion agreed, as he must, but Tywin was at least satisfied that the child's forked tongue was not lashing his already raw temper today. "I got a letter from Aunt Genna this morning."

 

Tywin's temper flared, but he caged it and sat back in his chair, his cane banished to lean against its arm where it could not taunt him with his continued weakness.

 

"As did I." Twyin allowed. "What shall you write her in return?"

 

"I will first assure her that the Lady Gwyn was well cared for in the North and seems happy. She seems quite distressed to have learned all that went on with the girl after the fact." Tyrion raised a bushy eyebrow over his unnatural, black eye. "We both know how  _ distracted _ she became when the Court rested at Casterly Rock for so long."

 

Tywin didn't grace that with an answer. The taunt was well-aimed and infuriating. While he didn't blame his daughter for her fury over her husband's bastards, there was an  _ appropriate _ way to do such things. The twin bastards could have been taken care of with moon tea in the moons that Cersei knew of the pregnancy but chose not to act out of a desire for petty revenge. There was no need to bribe the drunken father nor his loose lips. Had the man not been bribed he would not have had to be punished and his beheading would have raised no questions. Then there would have been no talk amongst the servants of it inside the Rock.

 

"I imagine the Lady Gwyn knows as well." Tyrion went on, his other eyebrow joining the first.

 

"If she was indeed often in the kitchen and amongst the other servants and also in the solar with Genna and a dozen other places a fosterling child would be while being groomed for a high household position then I allow you are correct." Tywin nodded.

 

It was an unpleasant and dangerous reality. The child had likely heard many things that the servants knew better than to speak of outside Casterly Rock's walls, but wouldn't hesitate to speak of around a poor cousin from Lannisport who looked so much a Lannister to begin with. Any number of them could be potentially damaging should they become common knowledge; the story of Cersei's actions with the laundress first among them. Gods knew the oaf he'd wed his daughter to did not have the intelligence or the restraint to wait for the proof he'd made sure could not be found.

 

Moreover, Twyin was sure that the King would put Cersei aside if there was ample excuse. Were he to find out about the drowned babes, he could bring it before the Faith as a sign of madness. Tywin considered that excessive; his daughter wasn't mad, she was eternally frustrated and furious by an unworthy spouse.  _ Joffrey _ , however, Tywin would allow was the recipient of all of his parents' worse qualities multiplied tenfold. His father's refusal to work and disdain for thinking paired with Cersei's temper and pettiness had produced a child altogether too much like the man Tywin had most loathed.

 

Tywin would see if he could correct the boy somewhat. Hopefully Cersei would produce another Heir. None of that would matter if things proceeded beyond their control because the scheming of House Lannister's enemies was fed by rumors from the heart of their power.

 

"What do you intend to do about it?"

 

Tywin frowned at the Imp's bluntness. Then he decided he preferred the torment of his life blunt and exhausted to spouting witticisms. Either way, it was a valid question.

 

"You do not have a plan of your own, or a dozen?" Tywin taunted the boy slightly, unable to stop himself.

 

"Oh, several, and each less appealing than the next. I've found that I actually have limits to my depravity, though I know that must shock you. Besides, I think you will agree with me."

 

"Indeed?"

 

"Oh, quite, Father. You have always spoken so readily of my responsibilities and how I dishonor them and our House with my mere existence. It must irk you tremendously knowing all that happened. After all, you are so utterly responsible for the safety and wellbeing of all of your fosterlings. No-one has ever faulted you, after all, for a single child ever placed in your household's care."

 

That much was true, and the bolt found its mark. Tywin remained stoic, but inside he burned with frustration. Worse, a feeling he had banished years ago had returned. He'd thought he'd killed it first when he'd stepped into his father's shoes. Then, again, when his son had killed the Mad King who'd betrayed his friendship, ignored his hard work, and mocked him openly in later years.

 

Shame had returned, though, and now it was a sad and petty thing. Somehow, to Tywin, that made him worse. Now it was not the result of another's actions. Now he was not helpless in the face of it. Now, instead, in between illness and another inept King, he'd allowed an oversight to occur within his own household. One that shamed even him, as it related to what could now no longer be denied was part of a pattern on the part of one of his own bannermen. A bannermen that Tywin was reluctant to lose for his usefulness.

 

"I suppose you could kill the girl." Tyrion offered gamely, tapping his short, broad fingers on the edge of the desk. "It would fit with the theme, would it not?"

 

Tywin looked at the Imp in disgust. The child who'd killed his wife, his soulmate. The misshapen monster that had torn Joanna apart and then brought shame and embarrassment to his family time and again. Tumbling like a jester, marrying some commoner, the drinking, the whoring, and not to mention all of the painful years he'd spent trying to wed the useless creature off only to be met with mockery from lesser men when he spoke of even their ruined daughters.

 

Now here he sat with a daughter too foolish for the crown she wore, but who presumed herself wise. A mad grandson his line's ultimate end. A son who was a great warrior, golden and perfect, but who'd walked away from his family for a soiled white cloak.

 

It was as his mind walked those paths of thought that the proper solution occurred to him. It held all of the things he wanted in any solution to any problem he dealt out. It was just, it punished those in need of punishment, and it would achieve his ends nicely in both making amends for his oversights and in removing a pawn from his enemy's hands.

 

"On the contrary, we are not going to offer any threat at all to the Lady Gwyn Parren." Tywin answered the Imp's rhetorical question.

 

"We aren't."

 

That was flat disbelief in Tyrion's tone. Good, Tywin felt it would make this that much sweeter.

 

"Indeed. I am no kinslayer." _ If I was, you wouldn't be here to annoy me so.  _ "She is the most distant of kin, that is true enough, but the girl has Lannister blood."

 

"House Parren has done nothing but marry Lannisport Lannisters, Lannys, Lancells, and Lancetts since we raised them to their lordship nine generations ago, Father." Tyrion snorted, his eyes wary despite being tired enough to be incautious in his tone. "She's likely got more Lannister blood than  _ we _ do, having married into important houses such as the Marbrands so often."

 

"Then she will make a most  _ appropriate _ wife for you, don't you think?"

 

The Imp went completely still, staring at him in shock. It was a pleasant thing to see his ugly face so wiped clean of smugness. Eventually he groped for a glass of wine he hadn't availed himself of while working through the night. He looked at his empty hand, and then his desk tragically.

 

"You do not jape. I must be hallucinating."

 

"On the contrary, it is entirely appropriate." Tywin replied, beginning to enjoy himself. "She is young and untouched. She is likely quite fertile, as our family's lesser branches almost always are. She is growing into something of a beauty, which might in some way offset your own deficiencies, and she is poor and unimportant enough that she can in no way refuse the honor of joining my House."

 

"Save for the fact that she has every reason to hate us."

 

"If she has any reason to hate anyone, it is Lord Parren for being too much of a craven to do anything about the situation in the first place. He is the Head of her House."

 

"Father, you cannot possibly believe that you are going to walk up to the girl, or the _Red_ _Viper_ or his wife and just suggest she wed me and they'll all be in agreement!"

 

"You are always saying you are a man of intelligence. Use it to convince the girl to wed you."

Satisfied, Tywin Lannister walked out of the room, ignoring it when the Imp called for him just as he'd ignored his shrieking as a misshapen infant.

 

* * *

Ser Domeric Bolton leaned against the paddock fence outside a set of stables near the tourney grounds currently being rented by House Tyrell. He watched the fluid action of a tall, perfectly proportioned filly with eyes as avid as many men turned towards a bottle of wine or a shapely woman. Mind you, having heard the latter part in ribald jokes for the last few years, the Bolton knight would have very calmly shoved a gauntleted fist down the throat of anyone who made the tired old jape again. Everyone in the North had heard the one about the Ryswell lord who'd attempted to marry his horse, and that went double for anyone of Ryswell blood.

 

The horse was a beautiful, pure white. A gray, naturally, with a dark muzzle and great brown eyes, but her coat was perfectly white all the same. That was a rare thing in a filly of only three years.

 

"Beautiful, isn't she?"

 

Domeric turned to see another knight, one of around his age, walking towards him. He was nearly blinded by the brightly shining plates of the man's armor. He wore a long green cloak with the armor, which was either silver-plated or merely excessively shined steel. It was covered in engraved roses, and while Domeric would admit his own plate was fine and well-decorated, at least he didn't have to worry about fingerprints on the largely matte finish.

 

"Yes, Ser Loras, she is."

 

Loras Tyrell was impossible not to recognize. If the flowing golden-brown curls and golden-hazel eyes weren't enough, then the armor  _ definitely _ was. Domeric resisted the urge to ask the Lord Paramount's son if the Southron really was poncy enough to ride around in a living flower cloak. If he was, Domeric's foster-brothers at House Redfort owed him thirty silver pieces apiece. He supposed he'd find out at the tourney.

 

His father would be wroth with him if he found out he was betting to no purpose, but Domeric was confident he could defend himself in this case. They had bet silver. Domeric had been challenged to figure out how to send ice to the Redfort without it melting. His foster brothers had forgotten a time limit; he'd just send it in Winter. Unlike them he didn't trust the summer of their childhoods to last forever.

 

"My brother, Lord Willas, breeds the finest horses in the Seven Kingdoms." The Knight of Flowers boasted.

 

Domeric bit his tongue. First of all, he didn't want to offend the other man needlessly. He was the son of one Lord Paramount and the Marked soulmate of another. Odd as that was. Still, Domeric was here to make House Bolton look good, not make them enemies.

 

It still chafed a little. House Ryswell was known all through the North for its fine horses. South of the Neck, however, everyone  _ ignored _ it even as they bought in from them to improve their lines in hardiness and strength.

 

"I've never seen a finer horse for Southron weather." Domeric had to couch his agreement a little, and at Ser Loras' look, explained. "She's the finest filly I've seen of her age, I'll grant, but the flaxen chestnut behind her doesn't have the feet or the legs for deep snow. The gelding's a walking broken leg. That sorrel doesn't have the haunches for it, either."

 

"Ah, well, the Reach hasn't gotten more than ankle-high snow since before my grandmother was born." He smiled winningly. "I doubt we'll see any such weather again. Knee-high snow in the Reach is a once in a century event."

 

"How long has it been since the last one?" Domeric asked.

 

"About a century." A drawling, familiar voice added and Domeric kept his face schooled to polite interest rather than the sharp grin he felt at the sally. "It was the last time there was a deep snow at Castle Yronwood, as well."

 

"I didn't think it ever snowed in Dorne." Domeric offered in polite and genuine interest; the land of deserts and red sand was so alien to him, he couldn't really imagine it.

 

"In the heights of the Red Mountains, yes, quite often at the top of the peaks." Prince Oberyn Martell wandered up, flanked by Ser Daemon and Ser Ulwyck. "Below that, however, no it does not usually snow in Dorne. According to legends there were dustings of snow in Sunspear a few times during the Long Night, but even then it was not unmanageable to grow crops and such."

 

"Aye, I'd heard that tale on the way down." Domeric grinned as he leaned back against the rails and nodded towards where the tourney grounds were. "Do you fancy a run at the tilt for our own amusement, Prince Oberyn? I haven't reclaimed my honor from our bout at Riverrun, and I find myself bored."

 

"If you take him up on that, Prince Oberyn, I demand a chance as well." Ser Loras intervened, grinning. "I myself came down to test the field with the knights who are preparing for their chance at the tilt tomorrow."

 

"I would take you both up on that, then, thank you."

 

Domeric was surprised and delighted when the prince agreed. He'd been so nervous to be jousting a man of Prince Oberyn's reputation that he'd looked too much for some trick and not enough for the man's skill. As a result the lack of the former and sheer quality of the latter had put him on his ass in the most embarrassing fashion. His father would be furious if he didn't regain his pride before the Prince left their company for Dorne, though Domeric himself considered it something of a valuable lesson.

 

How often did Southrons deride the North simply because they were different? In Prince Oberyn's case it was likely easier to say he was a cheat than to simply say the man was just that good. If they did so, they'd have to say something nice about the Dornish. If, by the time he rode North, Domeric had such nasty rumors going out about him, he'd take it as a sign of his own skills being of merit.

 

_ Forty-thousand gold dragons wouldn't go amiss, either… _

 

"I see you were admiring the grey." Oberyn nodded. "Fine animal. Is she the filly Willas wrote me of earlier this year, Ser Loras, when he was attempting to convince me to put Lia on something other than a sand steed?"

 

"I believe she was, yes. She and Lady Lance could grow into each other, as it were."

 

"I can see the appeal, but my sense of pride in Dorne forbids it."

 

"Not to mention my brother's likely reaction." Ser Ulwyck snorted and stepped forward, introductions going around to Ser Loras. "Put his granddaughter on a horse  _ he _ didn't gift her? Harmen would come looking for your blood."

 

"The finest sand steeds in Dorne come from Hellholt's stables." The Uller knight turned and bragged after prompting his prince to chuckle.

 

"As opposed to what can be found in Hellholt's dungeons?" Ser Loras japed and got a glare in return.

 

"If you ever desire to know, you need only visit to find out." The older man said archly, then turned to Domeric. "Ser Domeric, please support me in this. If they are really so horrified by our reputation, why the  _ fascination _ ? It's not as if we've done anything that dramatic since we killed that dragon. Really, I think people make too much of it."

 

"Oh,  _ surely _ ." Domeric agreed, totally deadpan. "And my family only ever wished to explore and investigate the intricacies of the old magicks. After all, the Starks were skinchangers, you know. We were just helping them change their skins."

 

Ser Ulywck laughed gleefully at the sally while Oberyn chuckled, likely at his tone. Ser Loras looked as though he'd unfortunately gotten too far into a jape he no longer was quite comfortable with. Ser Domeric offered him a small smile to set him at ease, and shrugged in his own armor.

 

"My kin hasn't done that since long before the Targaryens arrived in Westeros, our banner aside, Ser Loras. I just get tired of hearing it japed over."

 

"Like my family being mad and torturing people." Ser Ulwyck added.

 

"I'm sure we all have japes we are tired of hearing." Ser Domeric finished and Loras' face had shifted from uncomfortable and on the verge of being annoyed to agreement and comradery.

 

"Quite." The young knight turned and looked out over the paddock fence that Prince Oberyn was leaning on several fences down, having wandered away with surprising swiftness. "Have you seen a horse you'd like to borrow for the tourney, Your Grace? My brother wrote that you were to have any you chose."

 

"He did, and I wrote this morning to offer my appreciation for both the horse and the tourney saddle he sent me." Oberyn offered. "I've never seen so credible a Dornish saddle worked by the hands of any other kingdom's artisans. I can almost forgive him for putting flowers on it!"

 

Ser Domeric chuckled, but was fascinated.

 

"I've never seen a Dornish jousting saddle. Are they much different?"

 

"They're lighter, more streamlined." Ser Loras answered. "They offer more maneuverability but less support. I actually use a design modified from the standard Dornish jousting saddle. Willas insisted."

 

"It's nearly impossible to get trapped in a Dornish saddle." Prince Oberyn's tone was quiet and tense.

 

Ser Loras' face turned grim for a moment, then he nodded. In the moment of awkwardness Domeric had no idea what to say. Who didn't know the tale of Willas Tyrell's crippling? It had been one of the reasons Domeric himself hadn't been allowed to ride in a tourney that had been held a year before. Lord Redford had been determined that no one who squired at his household would ever ride a joust before they were ready.

 

Ser Loras definitely and visibly wanted to beat Oberyn in the joust; it was clear in his eyes when he butted into Domeric's invitation. There was no malice there, however, and none of the drive to injure Domeric knew from having seen in his father's eyes now and again when he dispensed justice or punished a servant. It was simply the urge to claim a victory his brother had not been able to. Domeric could hardly fault him for that.

 

"Pity you didn't share that information with us several tourneys ago, Prince Oberyn."

 

Domeric turned and held in a wince. He saw Ser Loras' expression briefly flickered to something other than the eager sportsmanship of a moment before. The man walking up was unmistakable with his gray-threaded light brown beard and hair and his portly build.

 

"Quite." Prince Oberyn's tone was filled with sarcasm. "Unfortunately, as Lord Willas squired in Highgarden, I had not had the privilege of so advising him. He had to look elsewhere for guidance."

 

The Warden of the South's face began to turn slightly red as he worked out the insult buried there. Ser Domeric had a moment's worry before Ser Loras stepped in. Then it was exasperation because he had not asked to be a distraction.

 

"Father, may I introduce Ser Domeric Bolton, Heir to the Dreadfort?" Ser Loras stepped forward and gestured to Ser Domeric. "He was just admiring the grey filly you had to twist Willas' arm to make him part with."

 

"Your brother has more than enough horses, and that one will fetch a pretty price." The lord grinned widely. "Care to discuss a purchase, Ser Domeric?"

 

"Sadly, I inquired about her already with the man your son and Heir sent down and she's too rich for my purse." Domeric lamented with a shrug. "I am as yet only the Heir to the Dreadfort, and not her lord."

 

"How about a wager then?" Lord Mace Tyrell clapped a hand on Ser Loras' shoulder. "If you can beat my son at the tourney tomorrow, she's yours."

 

Domeric tried not to gape. The filly in question was worth a great deal, far too much to wager with. He enjoyed a small wager now and then, but only when he knew he couldn't lose. The Knight of the Flowers might dress like a joke, but his appearance was as deceiving as the cheerful pink of the Bolton family banner.

 

"I am afraid I have nothing of remotely equal value I can afford or would wager, Lord Mace, so I couldn't possibly match the generosity of your wager."

 

"I'll match it." Ser Ulwyck stepped forward, his grin sharp and a little mad. "A sand steed from my family's stable if Ser Domeric should lose."

 

In the background, Ser Domeric saw the Prince frowning as he stood by Ser Daemon, speaking closely with a man in plain boiled leathers and a brown cloak. He was totally distracted from that, as were all of them, by Ser Ulwyck's declaration. Domeric didn't even try not to stare in shock at the slightly shorter, broader man.

 

"Ser Ulwyck, I could never accept-."

 

" _ Horseshit _ !" The knight proclaimed with a kind of ferocious happiness. "Are we not allies now, the North and Dorne? No, this touches on both our honor, Ser Domeric. Besides, I've seen you ride. Forget the world and disdain them in return for their japes and ignorance. You're a born knight if I've ever seen one, don't unhorse yourself worrying about anything but the damned joust."

 

Feeling his heart swell at the compliment, unexpected and unlooked for, Ser Domeric Bolton bowed. Whatever he was about to say was derailed when the Red Viper walked up, looking every bit as poisonous as his namesake given the harsh set of his features. Hearing of the bet from Lord Tyrell, he bowed briefly.

 

"Then I wish you great luck, Ser Domeric, unfortunately our match to test the ground shall either have to wait until this evening or be postponed for the tourney tomorrow. I've just heard of some business I cannot put aside." He looked at Ser Loras. "I will see you upon the pitch."

 

"And I you, Your Grace." Ser Loras replied gallantly and Ser Domeric was left to go back to his own business.

 

He went to saddle his own stallion immediately. His father's expectations were already hovering over Domeric's head, but it was Ser Ulwyck who'd captured his attention. He'd never asked the man for his help or support but he'd found it unlooked for. As badly as he'd wanted to win before, he found it was nothing compared to the fire he felt now.

 

* * *

It was not something Oberyn would have thought to be four moons before, but never let it be said that he did not learn his lessons quickly and well. Even when he was a recalcitrant student, he'd been an intelligent one. The same went for lessons in life.

 

"Yer Grace."

 

The man was middle aged and rail thin, with dirt under his nails and a few dusty spots on his tunic and trousers. He was smallfolk. His bow was awkward in the extreme.

 

Oberyn held his hand out to the man as he'd seen Lyarra do, when she'd introduced him to the peasants who'd arrived outside the Twins with their mattocks and their scythes. They had technically come with Edmure Tully, for they'd met the young knight and their future lord upon the road. It was the Martell Princess who'd stopped to speak to them the way the Starks did with all of their people that they were really on that road. The gratitude for the inoculation on their minds and her grace and humility had drawn them out.

 

Oberyn Martell was not a humble man. That didn't mean he couldn't acknowledge and treat others well without layering on the condescension of rank. He'd simply never had a reason to try before, outside of his days as a mercenary.

 

"You are Jago, correct?" Oberyn greeted the man, clasping his forearm and shaking the way that Lyarra did.

 

The gesture, he was beginning to think, dated back to the days of the First Men when bowing was likely uncommon. It was still practiced much in the North. In the south, it remained mostly as an artifact amongst the smallfolk, but it was one Oberyn was more than willing to adopt if it would give him an edge in getting the information he sought.

 

"Yes, Yer Grace, I'm Jago." He answered, and though the thin face was lined and tan and his hair was gray, there was something a little young in his brown eyes as he looked up at Oberyn; as if he couldn't quite believe where he was or what was happening. "Greengrocer by trade. I handle a good lot of the goods that come into the city and move 'em about."

 

"I will keep that in mind when my ship leaves for Sunspear, then." Oberyn agreed and nodded back to one of his party's guards; a man of the Red Mountains whose First Man blood had left him fair enough to drift in and out of crowds well without being recognized as Dornish easily. "Orton says that you were who I should talk to, if there was a man I wanted to find in King's Landing or the fairgrounds?"

 

"Aye, well, me or Len at the Butcher's Guild. These knights, they eat and they drink and they whore. You want to find out something about 'em, Yer Grace, then ask someone who's feeding them or bedding 'em."

 

Oberyn pulled a fat purse out and began his usual request for information and promise of reward. He'd done it often enough in Essos or for Doran that he didn't think much of it anymore. That's why he was surprised when Jago the Greengrocer actually held up his hands in refusal.

 

"Prince Oberyn, I  _ can't _ be taking that, and I won't if you'll pardon me for saying no to a Prince." The old man refused, shaking his shaggy gray head. "I had fourteen grandchildren, and seven sons and four daughters when the Plague hit. Now I've four children living and six grandchildren and all of 'em because yer' brother, the Prince Doran, sent his goats down to us and saved us all. I won't be taking your gold. Now yer guard, Orton's, said you were lookin' for a man hid amongst t'other Westerlands knights?"

 

"Yes." Oberyn put the gold up, surprised. "Ser Amory Lorch."

 

"Orton said that he's the man what killed the lil' Princess back during the Sack?"

 

"Yes." Oberyn bit out. "He slaughtered my niece. I  _ greatly _ wish to discuss this with him."

 

"And the Fat King ain't having it public-like?" Jago grinned, showing surprisingly clean and even teeth before turning and spitting in disgust. "Yeah, I understand that. I wasn't born on the clean street I raised my children on. A little Fleabottom justice would suit any piece of shit that'd do that right."

 

"It is good to understand each other." Oberyn smiled back, equally sharp and was bemused when the man nodded in thought and tugged at his left eyebrow, showing why it twisted up at the edges.

 

"Since this Ser Amory Lorch might not be so free with his name, can you tell me what the misbegotten fucker looked like?"

 

"I can do better." Oberyn reached onto the bag at his hip and removed a fat sheaf of folded parchment.

 

Unfolding the parchment revealed that on each one was stamped an image. On their way from Riverrun Gwyn and Lyarra had surprised Oberyn greatly. In the wheelhouse, even while she was vexed with him, Lyarra had created a wood-carving from Gwyn's description of Amory Lorch and a drawing she'd done. Then, having incised into the wood his image, she'd printed it on sheets of parchment that Oberyn could use when trying to identify the man whose name the young Westerlans girl had given him.

 

"Now that's a  _ fine _ help." Jago the Grocer grinned and took the image that he was passed, frowning. "Piggy-looking fellow, ain't he?"

 

"Swine has never felt so insulted by a comparison."

 

Jago huffed out and laugh and shook his head.

 

"He don't look like any I've seen so far, but I've not been looking. If I could have a couple more o'those pictures I could give 'em to my boys and let everyone get a look at them. We'll be doing a lot of business in the fair around the tourney. If he's anywhere in the pavillions, one of my boys should see the piece of shit." Jago nodded to himself, then looked up, unsure suddenly. "How am I to get word to Yer Grace? The Red Keep ain't no safe place for Smallfolk."

 

"I know, the Prince of Tongues has more than made his presence known, and his mother's no better."

 

"Good name for the royal brat." The grocer spat again, nodding but saying nothing else.

 

"You may leave word for me with Madame Rozen at the brothel with the pink walls behind the Street of Silk." Oberyn informed him. "My men frequent it, and no-one will wonder at someone delivering them vegetables or fruit, or simply coming in to enjoy the atmosphere."

 

"The atmosphere, eh?" Jago chuckled and offered another awkward bow. "Don't worry 'bout it, that's good. If this child-killer shows up, we'll see him, and I'll let my friends know. The smallfolk don't forget our friends, you know? We remember our Silver Prince, Yer Grace, for he wasn't too fine to share a song and a pint when times were bad for us all, and we know the Martells of Dorne are good to the people, too."

 

"We thank you for it. The Plague cared not who it struck." Oberyn agreed, his throat tight in memory of Ellaria's begging him to be strong for their daughters and Tyene's burning fever. Reaching out he caught the man's hand and pressed a gold dragon into it despite his objections. "No, not a word. You've still got family to feed. I would ask one more favor, as well."

 

"What can I do?"

 

The man's expression softened again, and for a moment the age-hardened peasant looked young. Oberyn leaned forward as they stood inside the shade of a gnarled tree, blocked from sight by the man's overloaded ox-drawn wagon of cabbages. Then, having drawn the man further in with the expression of trust, he continued.

 

"There's a man named Lord Petyr Baelish. He was the Usurper's Master of Coin, but in the town he was called Littlefinger, and he owned most of the brothels in King's Landing."

 

"Yeah, I heard of him." Jago agreed. "Not a bad man, ready with his money, and he was willing to lift up the commons if we proved we could do a job. Pity he died."

 

That was not the description of the rather derided Lord of the Fingers that Oberyn had expected to get. That said, he wasn't going to contradict the peasant who was so generously insisting that he could and would seek out information for Oberyn without payment.

 

"Well, he took information we need to the grave." Oberyn went on. "So if you were to happen upon any of his people who might know some of what he did, I would appreciate word of it."

 

"Yer Grace, I never heard of a dead man so popular as this Littlefinger." Jago reflected and Oberyn stiffened.

 

"Indeed?"

 

"Oh,  _ yes _ ." He went on, nodding eagerly, obviously pleased to have some information to offer already. "Yer Grace, the Old Bloody Lion himself, Lord Tywin, has had his people about looking. Not like they'll find anything out after what he did to us in the Sack. I lost kin to him too, you know, most of us did who're of an age to remember it. He was a good Hand, I suppose, until he turned his on you. Either way, the smallfolk won't tell his people  _ shit _ , not with what his Queen's done to us."

 

"I'd heard about the purges after the riots." Oberyn acknowledged solemnly, though an evil glee bubbled up under the surface as he saw the disrespect the smallfolk apparently felt for the Lannisters. "My condolences if you suffered losses."

 

" _ Losses _ , he says. No, I was lucky. Most others were not." Jago shook his head and his mouth twisted disgust. "If her son's not ripping people's tongues out, then whores the King's favored are going missing. Then she acted like the whole damned city was guilty for her babes being torn out of their crypts. Folk from Fleabottom were blamed, but I'll tell you now that they weren't what started it. The Goldcloaks have been threatening the people to get protection money, saying that if you don't pay they'll either clap you in irons or they'll destroy your goods. No need for  _ brigands _ in the city walls! The Goldcloaks are good enough for that themselves! If they hadn't come around in Fleabottom, rousing people up and busting shops, that riot never would have happened."

 

"Thank you for telling me." Oberyn allowed gravely. "I've no power to do anything about it; I am but a prince in a land of Kings, and the nobles here have little respect for Dorne. I will let it be known where I can, though."

 

He was pleased to see the offense he'd generated with that statement, but he went on as if it was just a situation he took for granted rather than one he ground noses into and had caused a great deal of harm over the years in regards to as a way to remind people of why Dorne had never kneeled.

 

"Well, thank you for that. Yer an honest prince, Yer Grace, and that's saying something."

 

"Thank you for the kind words and the information. Is anyone else looking for Littlefinger's people?"

 

"The Imp's sent out that sellsword of his, but he's only one man." Jago grinned again. "We'll keep him and the rest of the red cloaks going in circles. The goldcloaks are a menace we'll have to take care of, but we've fixed 'em for now. They don't go in Fleabottom anymore. They don't come out."

 

Oberyn shook the man's hand again, clasping his wrist and patted him on the shoulder when he offered another awkward bow. Then he turned to Daemon and jerked his head as they slipped back down a lane of tall hedges and then back into the broad encampments of knights, attendants, servants, and merchants that surrounded the tourney grounds. Ser Daemon Sand and Ser Ulwyck fell in around him, along with his guards.

 

They'd already been out, supposedly just wandering the slowly developing tourney fair and enjoying the sights. It was something he would have done anyway, so it was no shock to anyone, nor could anyone call the behavior odd. Most knights who planned to compete would do the same, sizing up the competition and gaining insight into who they might choose to face or who would challenge them.

 

"So, the Lannisters are already looking." Ser Ulwyck mused quietly and Oberyn snorted.

 

"We knew they would be." Oberyn allowed. "With the books lost and the Imp serving as Counter with no Master of Coin in King's Landing we are at a disadvantage. They are at one too, it appears."

 

"Prince Doran did more good than he knew." Ser Daemon murmured and Oberyn shook his head.

 

"I think my brother was likely the only man who  _ did. _ That may be why, more than anything, he insisted I ride south. Seeing the condition the Crown is in matters very little next to all of this." He nodded at where a number of shirtless smallfolk men were unloading ale barrels; sweating in the sun, on the back of each man's shoulder was a scar made of white pinpricks showing a blazing sun.

 

Both of the other knights nodded their agreement and Oberyn passed a broad, sharp smile on his face and began to talk of the coming tourney instead. They all loudly discussed the men at joust. They stopped here and there to talk to a knight Oberyn knew, or had heard of. Hands were shaken, wine and ale was shared, strategy was discussed, and the significant purses offered by the Crown.

 

By the time Oberyn returned to the Red Keep he'd spent hours like that and in assessing the field itself. He did, in the end, manage to ride the tilt a few times to get the feel for his borrowed horse and his newly gifted saddle. Satisfied with both, and only slightly bruised when, out of four tilts, Domeric Bolton knocked him firmly on his ass in one of them, Oberyn turned back to the Red Keep.

 

He didn't have Rhaenys' murderer at spearpoint yet, but he could feel how close he was getting to it. Gwyn's insistence that Elia's murderer was not present was at least a clue. How many knights who were also at the Sack would not show up at a tourney with such high purses?

It turned out, Oberyn was surprised to learn, that a number of Westerlands figures who often appeared at tourneys were absent. Some were dead, the Plague having carried them off. Many others, however, were simply absent. Among them were a few names always amongst the endless list bandied about, muddying the water of Elia's revenge since she was first murdered.

Gregor Clegane hadn't left the Westerlands in years, according to some. A few said that the Mountain who Rides' health was ruined by the Plague, but many others say that wasn't the case. Some simply claimed that he could no longer find anyone willing to fight him. So that was not complete proof that he was who Gwyn would not yet speak of

 

House Broom had sent no men, nor had House Westerling. Odd that, as the Westerlings were ever in need of funds. House Jast had sent only one knight. House Hamell usually participated, but again, there were no knights from that House present. House Marbrand, House Spicer of all things, House Lydden and a few others were in attendance, but the poorer branches that were usually well represented by second sons in need of funds were nowhere to be seen.

 

Oberyn, Ulwyck, and Daemon were sitting in Oberyn's guest solar and discussing this of the evening when the ladies returned in a state of clear agitation. Lyarra was angry, Walda shocked, and Gwyn was grinning broadly despite the fact that the front of her gown was stained with wine.

 

"I take it that the Queen's entertainment was not so tiresome as feared?" Oberyn asked, frowning as he took to his feet and looked at where his uncle stood with the party looking a mix of curious and fearsome.

 

"Oh, there was  _ some _ excitement, nephew." Lord Gargalen drawled and as the door shut behind them Gwyn grinned like a hunting cat at all and sundry.

 

* * *

Ser Barristan Selmy did his duty as he'd sworn to, but had it not been an act of cowardice and a misuse of his authority as Lord Commander, Barristan would not have stood guard over the Queen. The Crown Prince he was reluctantly grateful to have duty over, for he could exercise enough authority to somewhat control the mad child's vices just through his presence. The Queen, however, was simply petty and awful.

 

_ "It is," _ Barristan thought, as he stood silent and straight off to the side of the Queen's ballroom, his silver and pearl armor gleaming under the lights of the torches and their gleaming mirrors.  _ "Not that she does not have the look of a queen. She is beautiful, she stands with pride, and she has no hesitation in issuing orders. It is that she only looks the queen, and in all  _ other _ qualities she is lacking." _

 

As most of his thoughts were, these remained silent. Locked behind his armor and beneath his cloak, he watched the Queen's latest entertainment just as he'd once watched Aerys burning people alive in his madness. At least this was a far lesser travesty.

 

"It's such a  _ shame _ that you must be discommoded so to be with child during such a long journey." Queen Cersei was smiling over her glass of wine at where the Princess Lyarra sat, her eyes as mean as her expression was sweet. "After all, it is not as though you travel much, in the North."

 

"We appreciate the comforts of home."

 

"What they are, yes, surely." The Queen replied to the somewhat terse answer of the Princess condescendingly. "You must have been ever so surprised to come south and see what castles below the Neck truly looked like."

 

"Oh, I  _ was _ ." The Princess agreed readily. "I was shocked to see that the Twins garderobes rely on nothing but gravity and foul the same river they drink from. And while Riverrun was fairly well settled in the plumbing department, the lack of heat in the walls was a disappointment."

 

"How would you put heat in the walls?" Lady Taena Merryweather asked, frowning.

 

She was one of the Queen's favorites; a woman as low of morals and of cunning as herself. She was an unashamed social climber. A seductress of lush body and sagging ideals who'd gotten Lord Orton Merryweather to wed her during his exile in Essos. Like the other favorites clustered around Queen Cersei, the lady had spent the last two hours aiming barbs at the Stark-born Dornish Princess and her party.

 

"Winterfell sits on hot springs. Scalding water from the hottest of the springs is piped through the walls of the inhabited parts of the keep, and through the glasshouses, to warm them." Princess Lyarra explained calmly where she sat on a small sofa just large enough for herself and one other.

 

"You are ever so learned in matters of plumbing, Princess." The Queen smiled, her tone all sweet insult. "I've never met a lady so interested in that…  _ particular _ subject."

 

Princess Lyarra's main reaction to the barely veiled taunting had been to grow colder, like the Winter her family forever spoke of descending in person. This time, however, she smiled back. It was a wolf's smile, all snarling lip and glittering eyes.

 

"I'm descended from Bran the Builder, and Father always believed in having daughters of greater use to their husbands than their womb alone could provide."

 

"Indeed, and what useful children he's produced. I've heard that he's hired a dancing master for your sister." Queen Cersei's lips thinned, and the lines creeping around her eyes and mouth stood out for a moment from her artfully thin application of powder and rouge. "However does Prince Oberyn take that interfering with her swordsmanship lessons? I fear poor young Lord Edric Dayne will be heartbroken to find himself redundant as His Grace's squire."

 

"On the contrary, he's quite sure that the competition will encourage both of them to work all the harder to sharpen their skills." The Stark-looking girl continued the same icy self-control that was slowly chipping away at the Queen's affectation of haunter and self-mastery. "Princesses and ladies aren't as safe these days as they once were, after all, are they, Your Grace?"

 

The Queen stiffened at the reference. It hurt Barristan's heart, for Princess Elia had been a kind and generous woman. Little Rhaenys had been a joy to all in the Kingsguard with her laughter and mischief. Watching her forever run about after her black kitten had always put a smile on Barristan's face. Aegon had been too much a babe to show much personality yet, but weren't all babes a joy to a decent heart? Still, he was glad to see they were not forgotten, and a petty pleasure came to him whenever he saw the Lannisters reminded of their shame.

 

"One can hardly defend against the Plague." The Queen said and Barristan realized that, self-centered as she was, she'd taken the comment as an attack upon her daughter's death. "Unless of course, one has knowledge or materials one does not choose to share."

 

"That is ever a risk, when cultures and peoples are held apart from each other for petty reasons or unjust feelings of superiority." The Princess responded and whatever further might have been said to her clear comment about how the south viewed the people of the North was lost in another unwelcome voice.

 

"Mother!"

 

Barristan stiffened in surprise to see Prince Joffrey out of his quarters, then felt the knowledge that he was present ripple through the room. He heard the whispers and he saw the unease pass briefly over the controlled masks of the ladies of the court. Likewise, he saw the brief flash of disgust that touched Princess Lyarra's face. Thankfully, the Queen was looking away from her along with the rest of the court, beaming at her son.

 

"Joffrey, come here and sit beside me." Queen Cersei beamed and Ser Barristan stepped forward, clearing his throat and bowing slightly.

 

"My Queen, My Prince." He addressed them both with all the respect in his tone that he had ever addressed Aerys. Did that say more about his capacity as a knight or a liar? "I was unaware that the King had given permission for the Prince to leave his quarters."

 

The Queen's expression curdled and Prince Joffrey's face twisted with petulant malice.

 

"I am the Crown Prince!" He glared up at Barristan, his gleaming curls twisting around his face and his red and yellow silks rustling as the boy of two and ten clenched his fists and stomped one of his feet in the very picture the oncoming tantrum of a child a decade his junior. "Tell him, Mother, tell him I cannot be held against my will!  _ Dog _ !"

 

Barristan turned to look at where Sandor Clegane had walked into the room along with one other Westerlands guard favored by the Prince. He was still taller than Barristan, still younger, and still as ugly as the Gods allowed. He was not, however, quite so bad as he'd been when he first arrived. A couple of years before, he'd apparently saved up the money and seen some Maester who specialized in burns in the Westerlands, and worked for one of the great smelting places attached to a mint.

 

The man had done something to correct his drooping eyelid, though it had left him with incision scars at the corner of that eye. He had also taken skin from the man's leg and somehow gotten it to grow on his face, covering the places where the bone had shown through his jaw and cheek, and closing the open sores. Now the skin merely looked reddened and melted or oddly patchy in a couple of places.

 

"Clegane." Barristan nodded to him, but whatever else might have happened was forestalled by the rapid, heavy steps sounded from the same door the Prince had emerged from.

 

" _ Joffrey _ !"

 

The King's deep voice boomed in fury from the side of the ballroom, and the King emerged red-faced behind his beard. There was a bite mark at the corner of his lip that had gone livid. In the time since the Plague, where the King had begun to seek the Queen's bed regularly again, experience had taught Barristan that it likely corresponded with the bruise upon the Queen's cheek.

 

"Father!" Joffrey leaned forward, his expression a mask of excitement mixed with fear. "Father, I had heard about the Beggar King and had to congratulate you  _ personally _ ! I came to Mother to ask where you were, but you've found me first."

 

King Robert's face was uncomfortable. He looked at his Heir as if he was a puzzle he couldn't solve. Ser Barristan could have told him from  _ ages _ of experience that madness cannot be solved, cruelty cannot be loosened from a nature it has settled in, and stupidity cannot be reversed by education the way that simple ignorance could be untaught. No-one, however, was asking the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who had served three kings, what he thought of the next man supposedly to sit upon the Iron Throne.

 

"Yes…" The King's furious expression had softened slightly. "Yes, well, that's settled. The Targaryen twat is dead and gone to stone. I've put him on a plinth in the city to let the smallfolk see that they're as dead as their damned dragons. You were under my orders to stay in your quarters, boy."

 

"It's so  _ boring _ , Father!" The boy whined and the King's expression hardened.

 

"He'll do no harm sitting beside his mother, and it's not good to keep a child so locked away." Cersei added hotly, intervening. "Would you send him to the  _ dungeons _ next?"

 

The King's face went from hard to genuinely angry as he looked on his wife, his blue eyes clearer than normal as he glared down at the golden haired woman he'd wed. Barristan noted that the Queen's entreaty was poorly timed and ill-made. Whatever she'd done to infuriate the man lately, she was not an advocate anyone who wanted something from King Robert should choose.

 

It actually gave Barristan some small hope. There had been a time, before the Plague, when the Queen could badger the King into almost anything. He would turn to his ale and his whores and bury his head in the sand. Now, he would still return to his ale and his whores, but he was more than likely to thwart his wife effectively. He could still be manipulated and the Queen knew how to do it, but his newfound habit of walking away from her or his late discovery that ignoring her words infuriated her more than merely doing the opposite had been a relief. If nothing else it stripped her of some of the ill gotten power she'd slowly gained by picking up this or that thread of authority Jon Arryn was too tired to carry and King Robert too undutiful to care for.

 

"If he pulls another misbegotten stunt like he did,  _ yes _ , then that would be the place for him, wouldn't it?" The King said in a low voice that rolled through the room, silencing the whispers of the two hundred plus ladies and rich merchants wives that it contained. "Where else should a King send a man who maims his subjects? To the Wall? To the  _ block _ ? Tell me, Cersei, what do you think is a just punishment?"

 

" _ My son _ had the courage to silence those who disrespect your crown and you would threaten-." Queen Cersei was shaking with rage.

 

" _ Your _ son cries like a child when he's hit with a tourney sword and had others hold down his victims and wield the blades so he wouldn't get blood under his nails." The King barked out, his eyes narrow and harsh before he turned back to his son. "Joffrey, go back to your quarters,  _ now _ . Ser Jaime, take him there."

 

Ser Jaime, who'd come in with the King, bowed agreeably enough. His green eyes were angry, however, and Ser Barristan didn't need to ask why. It was not on the prince's behalf; the brother in the man was far stronger than the knight. He'd been hovering within arm's reach of his twin since the princess and little prince died and she began to behave with even more open defiance of her husband.

 

"Please, Father, I'm sorry!" Joffrey protested, stepping forward. "I only wanted to make you proud of me. They were insulting you-."

 

"They were gossiping. The commons do that, Joffrey." The King now turned to his son directly, his expression tense and filled with disappointment. "If you can't ignore the slights of a bunch of wine dealers and grocers with naught better to do with their time than peddle their wares in exchange for coin and flee from brigands, how the hell do you expect to hold a throne against your enemies?"

 

"I'll kill  _ all _ my enemies!" Joffrey said passionately.

 

"Yes, for you are  _ so _ feared by the squires in the yard."

 

The King’s disdain was clear, and yet the prince heard none of it.

 

"I am, Father." Joffrey's face lit up. "They won't even fight me with tourney swords, let alone bare steel."

 

"You've never been squired and have no cause to hold steel. I had that sword your mother gave you put into Lord Tywin's hands and he's sending it your Great-Uncle Kevan. You'll get it back, and your privileges, when you've proven yourself worthy of it." The King barked. "Now back to your quarters!"

 

The Prince went out of the ballroom at a run, sniffing loudly. Ser Jaime swore and sprinted after him, as did Sandor Clegane with his usual sullen silence. Ser Barristan stood at his post, receiving a nod from the King. The Queen sat, rigid and with every nearly invisible line in her face being graven deeper by her anger. Then, because it was that kind of day, the King spied the Princess Lyarra sitting with her blonde lady beside her and the three other ladies who'd come with her scattered about with little knots of others about them. The King's expression immediately softened and he stood up straighter, coming over and wordlessly taking an empty chair and dragging it over next to where the Red Viper's wife sat.

 

"Princess Lyarra, you're well today?" The King asked as he sat down, the small, silver-foiled ladies chair groaning under his weight as he lowered himself into it.

 

Ser Barristan prayed to the Warrior that the chair held up, then the Father, and then considered it and realized he had no idea who a fool would pray to. That would be his best source of help, however, in preventing this afternoon from descending into a further farce. The sun had just begun to set outside, and he knew that the Queen planned to end the entertainment only when her delight at tormenting her guests had ceased. Mayhaps it would end shortly now that her amusement had been destroyed by the King?

 

"I'm very well, Your Grace." The Princess, at least, had managed to get through the whole display with her dignity and equanimity intact.

 

She was wearing a Dornish dress. A beautiful thing, really, of indigo dye that made her already snow-pale complexion seem creamier yet. It was gathered in two slender, braided straps at her shoulders and wound down into a low v-shape at the front where the gathered silk crossed over her bosom, showing her small, high breasts to the best effect. It was also completely lacking a back. It had only a thin silver chain crossing her back, though that had not been much visible since she sat down.

 

Her dark hair had been pulled back from her face in a white netting meshed in a star pattern with little gleaming crystal beads that sparked rainbows into the air around her. Around her neck and draped down into her cleavage was a fine necklace of Stark-gray pearls. At her wrist was a gleaming redwood branch bent into a circle upon itself and carved into a bracelet that would have looked like a real, living snake to a disturbing degree were it not for the gloss of the polished surface and the grain of the wood.

 

The Queen had mocked the wooden jewelry worn by the Princess and the little Lady Parren when they'd arrived under the guise of examining such  _ 'quaint' _ accessories. It hadn't worked, as both were obviously pleased by what they wore. Moreover, the Princess had related that she'd carved the wood herself, and then asked after the Queen's talents and accomplishments. The Queen had, of course, mentioned that she been taught all of the accomplishments a lady was to be expected of, at the unparalleled glory that was Casterly Rock.

 

She played high harp in her youth. She sang all of the great ballads. She could write, draw, and paint if called upon to do it. Little Lady Gwyn Parren, of no blood and rank, had smiled sweetly at the Queen and begged for an example of her many talents, sure that the Queen had kept up with them over the years. Barristan had maybe been disloyal in his amusement over that; the Queen had not touched a harp's strings in years, nor had she sang in company in that time. He didn't imagine the amount she drank was gentle on the throat. The Queen had demurred, of course, and Cersei's green eyes had been furious at having her nasty jest turned back on herself.

 

"Good, good." The King called for a servant and wine, receiving it immediately as the man's wife sat stiffly and watched him lend all of his attention to another man's soulmate. At least this time his eyes only briefly undressed the Princess before he went back to, oddly enough, playing the gallant. "The whole court was worried for you, when you took that swoon during the feast. I was glad to see you so well last night. You had a fine time, I trust?"

 

"The feast was very diverting, Your Grace." The Princess stated politely, but he thought he could see a hint of nervousness around her eyes at the attention. "The North thanks you for your generosity."

 

The King beamed.

 

"It's nothing more than your father's owed. He's a good,  _ loyal _ man. Best man I've ever known, truly." He went on, visibly happy with the compliment before turning and lighting on the hardened leather case leaning against the Lady Gwyn's legs. "Ah, were you having music then?"

 

"Oh, we were!" The Queen interrupted, her eyes viciously alight. "In fact, the Princess Lyarra had promised us all a song."

 

She'd done nothing of the sort, and the girl paled at the mention of it. Barristan was glad for his helm's cover, for he couldn't hide his scowl at that. The Princess Lyarra was doing well, but she was young, obviously ill at ease in such large company. If she refused to be intimidated by her surroundings and had met the Queen without backing down that had impressed him greatly, but it didn't change the fact that she was uncomfortable.

 

"Really?" The King was more than pleased and delight and melancholy mixed in his expression as he spoke. "You sing? Let's hear it then. You know, your aunt could sing. Well, not maybe in the way these polished, useless ladies do, but she could belt out a tune with the best of them. You could really  _ hear _ her over a feast."

 

"Father's said that Aunt Lyanna enjoyed singing." She said helplessly and Barristan did indeed recall the Lady Lyanna singing at Harrenhal.

 

One night, egged on by her youngest brother and a betrothed even Barristan could see she didn't care for, she'd caterwauled out an entirely inappropriate tavern song. Young Ned Stark had looked embarrassed. Then he was just a boy fostering in the Vale at the time, barely old enough to be called a man. Brandon Stark had howled with laughter, though, as had then Lord Robert. If anything the Stormlord had been  _ more _ taken with her for the ribald behavior, whereas everyone else had looked a little appalled to hear a lady behave so.

 

With an aching heart, Barristan recalled that Lady Ashara had laughed about it later. He'd been guarding the Princess Elia and Prince Rhaegar. The latter had been distracted, as he often was, but Barristan had paid it no mind. If only he had… The Lady Ashara, Barristan recalled with longing, had sung beautifully. Though he knew he should not, and that it would only torture him, Barristan had looked for any trace of the lost love he'd been separated from by oath and time and death in the Princess Lyarra's face. He'd found traces that might have been some resemblance, but he couldn't help thinking it was his own wishes coloring his vision.

 

"Well, then, go on." The King turned to the blonde girl. "Care to play for your Princess and a King?"

 

"I'm always happy to play, Your Grace." The girl opened her case and bowed a little over the warm yellow and brown wood of her guitar.

 

" _ Good _ !"

 

Barristan took a moment to look over the girl. The Parren girl was unremarkable before the court with her lack of wealth and title, but he couldn't help thinking that would change shortly. Eyes had opened and if the women disdained her, the men wouldn't. She was a comely girl now, with her soft golden hair up in a series of twists twined together at the back of her head. Even her dress, made in much the same fashion as the Princess', was a pretty thing of pale yellow silk.

In a year or two, though, Barristan knew from experience that her beauty would spring forth. Once the Queen had been so; a pretty girl lacking only a little maturity to blossom into a great beauty. He fancied that Lady Gwyn had a kinder face, though, a little softer around the jaw, though she had the sharp Lannister nose and the razor-edged cheekbones of that family to go with the hair. Mayhaps her eyes softened her as well? Though he was long out of the Marches he fancied he saw Storm blue eyes on the girl.

 

"Lady Gwyn," Princess Lyarra began, her voice even and with the quiet tone she generally spoke with. "Play  _ Evening on Tarth _ ."

 

Ser Barristan had to keep himself from displaying his surprise somehow. It wasn't that old a ballad, but it was no new song, either, and not much popular. He wouldn't be surprised if most of the Court had not heard it, save for the three or four matrons in attendance. Queen Cersei did not like to let the aged or unlovely into her presence unless forced to, and this had been meant to be her triumph. Even now she sat, looking like a well-fed housecat, as she watched to see if the shy Stark girl would embarrass herself.

 

She did not.

 

The song was sweet and sad. It told of a mystery knight and his young squire who came to the Isle of Tarth when they were blown off course during a journey. While there they found Evenstar Hall held in the grips of a grasping steward who kept his aged lord in a drugged stupor and Lord Tarth's only child- a daughter- locked in her quarters.

 

The tune was not much heard because of its complexity. It was a rare voice that could soar to the proper heights and still have the depths to convey the strength of the hedge knight who took in this situation and worked to right it. The man fought bravely against the steward's champion and won easily, but the steward turned on him and called the men at arms in his pay.

 

It was then that the young Lady Tarth appeared, weilding a sword in her own hand. It described the lady as tall and fair, a beauty in spirit with eyes bluer than the waters of the Sapphire Isle, who lept into battle with the knight and his intrepid squire. The fight was won, and in the days that followed the maid fell in love with the hedge knight and Lord Tarth, no longer drugged past sense, blessed them to be wed.

 

The song ended on a sad note, however, for when the knight left for reasons of honor, his bride died in childbed. His goodfather blamed him for it. In grief, he left his son with Lord Tarth, and allowed the boy to be given his mother's name for, as a poor hedge knight, he had none to offer. Instead he left only his shield.

 

As the song ended on a soft note of love broken by tragedy, Ser Barristan swallowed roughly. He knew the song well, though he'd only heard it sung after the knight's death. For Ser Duncan the Tall was the unnamed knight in the tune, little though the kingdoms remembered that. Ser Barristan had known him, though not well, and had read his entry in the White Book. A record written in his own hand, with but one shaky line despite the man being late to his letters.

 

_ Never leave a lady with child alone, be she princess or pauper. Attend her well and guard her with your mind as well as your sword. If a Maester tries to bleed one of your charges while with child, bleed him first and better _ . It was strange advice for a Lord Commander to leave. It was only after that ballad had come to his mind that Ser Barristan truly began to understand it. Everyone had their griefs and their regrets, even Ser Duncan the Tall.

 

Ser Barristan felt his lips turn up as he saw the stricken look on the King's face, enraptured and captured as he'd been by the lyrical beauty of the Princess Lyarra's song. Lost as he was in recalling his boyhood idol, Ser Barristan hadn't thought of what else such lovely singing might remind him of. Instead, his own heartache took center stage and he looked again for Ashara Dayne's beauty in the Princess' face, and began to find hints of it whether they were there or not. Later he could make such a comment in front of a maid when speaking to Lord Arryn, and it would be much repeated.

 

"I don't know where you get your voice, Princess, but you get that feeling from your Aunt, you know." The King proclaimed after a long moment, clearing his throat while several ladies dabbed their eyes. "No cold thing was the Lady Lyarra.  _ She _ felt what life gave her, every minute. A man can tell."

 

"Aye, my Lord Father said something similar once." The Princess agreed, blushing fiercely as several other ladies began to offer their own compliments.

 

"Lady Gwyn."

 

Queen Cersei's words rang out, clipped and staccato with her fine Westerlands noble accent hammering out each syllable.

 

"Yes, Your Grace?" The blonde girl, on the cusp of her beauty looked up at the Queen whose own beauty was just beginning to fade around the edges.

 

The Queen took a deep swig from her nearly empty wine glass. Barristan realized that she'd emptied the large glass goblet completely during the song, and that during the course of the entertainment the decanter her servants were filling it from had needed to be refilled twice. That was  _ not _ a good sign.

 

"You play very well." The Queen went on, smiling. "I can't help but think of how much enjoyment my Aunt must have taken, seeing you gain the accomplishment during your time with us at Casterly Rock."

 

"Actually, my father taught me to play, though the Lady Genna did enjoy listening."

 

There was a hint of something almost pert in the girl's voice and Barristan was surprised. Other than one or two carefully worded remarks the girl had nearly vanished into the scenery simply sitting beside the Princess. That was not surprising, in some ways. She had yet to really grow into her beauty and the Princess simply shone with hers as the glow of a woman expecting lit her fine features. Now, however, though her eyes were downcast and her posture demure… there was something in the way that the Lady Gwyn Parren had spoken that raised the hair on the back of Barristan's neck. It was a feeling he'd learned to never ignore during combat, for it was always followed by some attack.

 

"I'm sure." The Queen smiled, having apparently decided to take her revenge on the Princess for existing and not bowing before her out on the Princess' friend; a tactic that might well work looking at how the Princess had gone stiff while trying to speak to the King and attend to what the Queen was saying to her friend at the same time. "Such a  _ quaint _ instrument. What's it called again?"

 

"It's a Westerlands peasant guitar."

 

"Oh, _of_ _course_ , that explains much." Mockery was the order of the day, as it often was with the Queen. "I do feel bad about my family's treatment of you. I've heard much of it lately, and I can't help that it was so wrong of us to allow you to be taken away like that at such a trying time. Lions shouldn't throw one of their own to the wolves."

 

"That's alright, Your Grace, they taught me to hunt."

 

Her words tripped up whatever insult the Queen had planned to level, or threat she was building up towards because they were unexpected. The Queen frowned and the King turned. He had, after all, heard one of his favorite words.

 

"Hunt?" King Robert asked, turning and looking the young blonde over and then looking back to the Princess; he continued his straight-backed knightly address, though, rather than how he often spoke. "You hunt, then, Lady Gwyn? I don't have to ask you, Princess. I never met a Stark who didn't hunt."

 

"And you won't today, King Robert." Princess Lyarra genuinely smiled at that. "Lady Gwyn isn't as accomplished as some of us, but it was always nice to have her along. She'd do all the butchering for us, and could skin the game faster than even Father."

 

"Really?" The King boomed out a laugh. "I'll take Ned to task over that. He used to laugh at me, claiming a fine lord such as myself was too good to skin and dress my own game. Got over that quick, I'll tell you. He was embarrassingly right, your father. I had never skinned or dressed my own game back then, but he wasn't stuck up about it. He sat down and taught me the way of it himself not a week after we'd come to the Eyrie."

 

"Father told me that story, yes."

 

"Told you I lost my ale and my midday meal all over the damned place, didn't he?" The King frowned and the Princess laughed. "Did he tell you  _ why _ ?"

 

"You're not the only southron tricked into eating a raw stag's heart, Your Grace." The Lady Gwyn leaned forward and offered merrily. "I got revenge for both of us."

 

"She did." Lyarra rolled her eyes. "Ate the whole thing and then held the second stag's heart right out to Robb and asked him to join her. How were we to know that doing that they eat raw fish in Lannisport?"

 

"No!" The King boomed out a laugh.

 

"Yes!" Lady Gwyn grinned broadly, and it was a child's grin at a trick well-played. "Robb's bread and ale revisited him as well."

 

The King boomed with delighted laughter. The Queen, holding out her goblet to be refilled, chose that moment to interrupt.

 

"Do you sing, Lady Gwyn?"

 

"I'm not accomplished at it, Queen Cersei, but I can if it pleases you."

 

"It would please me greatly if you would play me a song from the Westerlands." Queen Cersei's smile was sharp and brittle. "Something no-one could fail to recognize. Something to remind us of home."

 

Ser Barristan the Bold braced himself for another rendition of The Rains of Castamere. Instead the Lady Gwyn took up her guitar and began the opening chords of a song he didn't recognize. It was sweet and had a cheerful beat, however, and all were most attentive to it given how they'd been staring at the triangle of people made up by the King, the Queen, and the two young ladies seated hip-against-hip on the small couch. In a plain, but clear voice that managed to be pleasant if not at all special, Lady Gwyn Parren began to sing.

 

_ 'A Storm came to the Westerlands, _

_ Under the eve of the Iron Man _

_ Whereupon, steel was drawn _

_ To cut down the Drowned God's spawn _

_ Peace was forged for the Lion Lord _

_ Thankful to see his lands well restored. _

_ To Storm he offered a maid so fair _

_ A lioness of gold-spun hair _

_ And amber eyes that bespoke the sun _

_ Breaking through, the storm undone _

_ Charmed was all their love would be...' _

 

Ser Barristan startled as, with no warning, the Queen stood from her seat in an infuriated lurch, letting out a gasp of shock and anger and threw the contents of her wine glass directly into Lady Gwyn Parren's face.

 

"Cersei!" The King bellowed angrily, stumbling as he tried to get up out of the dainty chair and found its thin arms holding his bulk fast. "What in the Seven Hells, woman?!"

 

"Get out!" The Queen yelled, her face red and the long, graceful sleeves of her robelike gown in disarray as she shook both her fists at the whole collection, turning to look around her. "All of you get out!"

 

Barristan stepped to the side as the Queen flung her wineglass at the King and missed, sending it flying in the knight's direction instead. At that point the King was out of his seat and had taken both the Queen's wrists in his own, restraining her as she went into a drunken tirade about disrespecting her House. Ser Barristan couldn't help noticing, however, that in the split second between when the wine flew and the tirade started… Queen Cersei Lannister had not looked furious. Instead, the Queen had looked  _ afraid _ .

 

The Lady Gwyn was a contradiction. She'd come to the Queen's gathering of the ladies of the court demure and a little bit visibly afraid. Her hands had shaken a time or two in the beginning. His heart had gone out to the shy girl, raised to such a high station and so loyal to her Princess that she'd put herself in the line of a woman she feared as obviously as she feared the Queen.

 

Now, however, as Princess Lyarra Martell, daughter of a direwolf and wife of a viper, stood and demanded a towel from a nearby servant, the Lady Gwyn stood peaceful and still. Lady Walda, the heavyset but pretty maid who was also part of the Princess party, confiscated a towel draped over the arm of a servant and rushed up with it, fretting about the girl's dress and the wine staining it. The two Dornish ladies, more experienced, were all carefully calculated political outrage at the insult to the Princess' household, with a dash of actual concern for the girl on top of it.

 

"Ser Barristan, escort the Princess back to her chambers!" The King called as the rest of the court streamed out, for the Queen's order to clear the room had been reiterated by the King. For once he'd even been more polite than his wife about it.

 

"What goes on here?" A drawling, authoritative voice called from above and Ser Barristan looked up into the faces of Lord Gargalen, Lord Tywin Lannister, and Lord Jon Arryn, who'd obviously come from some meeting together and now stood on one of the four balconies that overlooked the Queen's ballroom. During an actual ball, they would hold musicians.

 

"Your Grace?" Lord Tywin frowned at the sight of the King manhandling his wife towards a door.

 

"Your daughter got drunk and threw a glass of wine in the face of one of Princess Lyarra's ladies because she didn't like a damned song, apparently!"

 

Lord Tywin's face, already severe, seemed to gain a thin layer of ice and he issued a command in a voice that, though quiet, carried well across the room.

 

"I would have a word with my daughter, King Robert."

 

The Queen ceased struggling and the King gestured to her grandly, showing how very welcome the Old Lion was to his daughter's company before King Robert strode out another doorway. His expression suggested that somewhere a barrel of ale was out there, dreaming of its approaching doom. Ser Barristan hoped that Lord Stark was somewhere in the Keep today, and not amongst his own Northern party. His presence seemed to help stabilize the King.

 

"Lord Gargalen, if you will meet us in the Red Gallery, I will escort you and the Princess to her chambers personally." Barristan called up and the old Dornish lord agreed, thankfully. A bow to the Princess offered him a dignified curtsey in return and Barristan's concern dictated he offer the Lady Gwyn his arm. "I do hope you're alright, Lady Gwyn?"

 

"It's just wine, Lord Commander. My eyes sting a bit, but no harm was done."

 

"But your new dress!" Lady Walda lamented, clearly as upset over the loss as only a young girl could be. Perhaps as much as the Lady Gwyn should have been, which only made him more curious yet.

 

"I'll just dye it black, Lady Walda, it will be fine. Blondes look lovely in black. Your next dress should be dark as well." Lady Gwyn replied with perfect good cheer and Ser Barristan wondered for a brief moment if she were merely hiding her upset in good humor.

 

Then he caught her eyes and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Because in the dry hills of the Marches he'd grown up in, away from the damp wet of the moors other families held, there were lions of their own to deal with. They were smaller than the great cats of the Westerlands, true. They were not so famous.

 

What the mountain lions were, however, was  _ clever _ . They hunted in the shadows. Their tawny coats vanished in the sands and against the rocky cliffs at the feet of the Red Mountains. Their cry was the hair-raising shriek of a demon's scream in the night, and at that moment Ser Barristan Selmy looked into the sweet smile that Lady Gwyn Parren was giving him and couldn't help of thinking of the last time he'd faced the teeth of an angry mama catamount.

 

Before he could ask the one question burning on his mind, however, Lord Gargalen joined them. He quickly joined Lady Jynessa Blackmont in voicing his outrage at this insult. Then he fretted in a fatherly way over the girl, preventing any further questioning. That left Ser Barristan with nothing he could do, but politely leave the girl with the Dornish party that she was a part of and go back to report his duty accomplished to his king.

 

Still… What precisely was the song that Lady Gwyn Parren had been about to sing, and why in all that was holy had it upset Cersei Lannister that much?

 


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tourney begins, Oberyn starts a rumor about Willas Tyrell, Lyarra learns to ALWAYS have a favor ready for Oberyn when he's jousting, and Lady Olenna throws some shade.

**Chapter Twenty-Five - 297 A.C.**

 

"I've let it be known that you are sailing for home to settle a matter for me that my lady wife wrote of." Lord Monford Velaryon told his brother as he helped tie off the linen of the bindings that held the slightly taller, leaner man's arm strapped firmly to his chest and held his shoulder in place. "We cannot have you seen, Aurane. You need it to be thought that you took this injury on your trip."

 

"I'm well aware, Brother." Captain Aurane Waters replied crossly, then breathed out and shot his brother an aggrieved look. "I'm sorry I failed our family."

 

"You failed nothing and no-one. Had my planning been better, the Prince of Tongues appearance would have mattered for naught."

 

"Or, better still, we would have been in a position to know of it _beforehand_ and done something constructive to the mad brat."

 

"I'm glad enough Varys sent a little bird to you at the last minute and you escaped from the crowd before you were recognized that I cannot be bothered to think of lost chances." Monford breathed out and sat back.

 

They were in a brothel near the docks. One that Aurane was known to occasionally grace with his presence. Monford trusted his wife to forgive him if she heard any tales of him being there as well, for he'd come for his brother's wellbeing and not for any entertainment. Aurane, at least, would speak to her of it and she would understand.

 

The night before Aurane had joined and to a certain extent led a group of peasants who were supposed to take custody of Prince Viserys' body. The idea was to have the false riot cover the theft of the boy's stony corpse. At that point, it could come into House Velaryon's possession secretly and Monford could see the body burned as the prince's ancestors would have wanted. He could hide the urn in the crypts until it could be slipped in with his ancestors at some point.

 

"Varys is always helpful." Aurane snorted and stood up. "Until he's not."

 

Monford inclined his head in a nod and then paused and looked around. Knowing what he wished to speak of Monford simply shook his head. Aurane nodded and Monford stood up and draped his brother's cloak over his shoulders before gently catching his chin.

 

Perhaps Aurane was a bastard, but he'd never been anything less than Monford's brother. A baby-brother, unexpected and unlooked for after Monford's mother had lost three children in quick succession and never quickened again. When his father had returned from a sailing trip with the infant Monford had been half-grown himself and expected his mother to reject the baby as most wives would, but she'd surprised them all. Lady Velaryon had _craved_ more children, and whether he was of her womb or not, Aurane had been a baby for her to love.

 

Monford had nearly expired in fear when he'd heard the full account of what happened. How the fake rioters had gotten into the smalls square to find Prince Joffrey defacing the pain-twisted effigy of Prince Viserys Targaryen with chisel and hammer. The ensuing rage on the part of the smallfolk had turned it from a false riot into a real one, albeit a very small one.

 

Unfortunately the Prince of Tongues had been either intelligent enough or craven enough to bring more than his share of Lannister guards with him. The rioters were armed with cudgels and had not come intending real violence. The Lannister guards were the worst of the Queen's pets and armed and armored accordingly. It had turned into a whirlwind of chaos and violence as the Queen's men began hacking at the crowd, Prince Joffrey was whisked away, and Prince Viserys' body was knocked off its plinth. Then, either to try and get the Hound away from the body or simply out of remembrance of Targaryen customs, someone had thrown oil and twisted straw faggots over Viserys' body and lit it with a torch.

 

The light, strange stone that took over the bodies of Greyscale victims did not light easily, but once it did it burned well and hot. Debris, firewood, carts, whatever the hands of the injured and riled peasant crowd could get their hands on had been added to the blaze. Thankfully most of the nearby houses were of good stone and the square itself was not too small.

 

The fear of the fire spreading had quickly overtaken the exuberance of the two or three hundred smallfolk who'd eventually flooded the square once the violence started. As the square was in a fairly upscale part of town chosen for its traffic, servants were called out and frantic merchants appeared with buckets. Water was drawn from wells and soon brigades were formed. Only six houses and three shops burned in the ensuing fire.

 

"Come on, let's get you to your ship." Monford breathed out, looking through the window at the gray dawn and rubbing a hand over his tired face. "I have to get you out on that ship, then I have to bathe and make myself presentable for the Tourney."

 

"You're not _competing_ , are you?"

 

"In the archery contest tomorrow." Monford answered, his lips turning up slightly in self-mockery. "I know my talents, Brother. I'm no-one's idea of a fine jouster, and if I can hold my own with a sword, I have no urge to join a melee that is not an actual battle. I'll keep the ladies company at the butts."

 

"Good choice."

 

Aurane offered him a grin through a split lip and the bruising running up the side of his handsome face. He'd been knocked out early in the proceedings by a frantic horse and pulled away by loyal retainers. Thankfully they'd had the foresight to take him to the brothel instead of the castle.

Once Monford had gotten his brother onto his ship and seen it lift anchor and head out with the tide he went back to the brothel he'd just left by an entirely different but equally circuitous route.

 

Once inside he was met by the proprietor, a stout Lysene woman with ice blue eyes and pale brown hair. She didn't bother to offer him the company of any of her girls, and instead indicated a room where he was relieved to find a hot bath and one of his servants waiting with a change of clothing. All too soon he was dressed and on his horse, and after that he was at the Tourney itself and could no more avoid bending the knee to the Usurper.

 

For once, however, he felt a little more buoyant having done so.

 

"Lord Velyaron. Not making a go of it?" The King barely acknowledged him and Monford shrugged, preferring not to be the center attention of the man who'd destroyed a great dynasty.

 

"Like yourself and the melee, I prefer to display my talents where they actually lie, Your Grace. I shall compete in the archery contest."

 

"With the ladies?"

 

"I've always enjoyed the company of the ladies. I've heard the King himself is partial to such as well."

 

The King's box always was at tourneys. Large, covered in his crowned stag banners, and standing in the center of the field. It was flanked by boxes dedicated to lesser nobility. Then, on either side, the open stands stood. The latticework of lumber that made up the regular stands for the merchants and lower nobles in attendance were a testament to good construction. Monford had a feeling that the things had been in use since before Maegor was known as the Cruel.

 

The smallfolk stood opposite the stands, past where ropes decorated with gold and black streamers were stretched to mark the field. Monford reflected that they appeared in fine spirits. The smallfolk did love a tourney, though, and part of what had beggarded the Crown was pandering to that. When the King threw a tourney, rivers of ale flowed at his largesse into the hands of the poor.

 

" _Ha_!" The King barked out a laugh, grinning behind his beard. "And we aren't short for beautiful ladies to appreciate today, are we?"

 

"No, my liege, we are not." Monford returned the man's smile honestly for once and made his bow to the King's left.

 

"Princess Lyarra, Lady Walda, and Lady Gwyn. You make me regret sending my brother away on an errand. He would have undoubtedly done something foolish for the attention of so many beautiful ladies that would have amused us all."

 

"The trick with the tablecloth at your dinner party was diverting, Lord Monford, you cannot deny your brother that." The Lady Walda tittered a little nervously as she answered and he smiled back at the plump, pretty girl's endless good cheer.

 

"It would have been more impressive had he not whipped the cloth out from under the plates only to set it alight by holding it too close to the candlebranch behind him."

 

"Well, yes, but he _did_ put it out very quickly."

 

"Lord Stark, Lord Gargalen, I trust you both won't be participating for different reasons." Lord Monford turned to the two lords and offered a bow of his own as they rose and returned it.

Lord Gargalen merely chuckled and agreed, but the King frowned at his foster-brother.

 

"Ned's being stubborn and too much of the North today." The King huffed, but his good mood remained in place. "I'll wear him down on the melee this time."

 

"You've been saying that since we were lads of ten. You've yet to wear me down."

 

"And I've got confidence that you're finally old and wise enough to agree with your King on the subject."

 

"Well, no-one could ever fault your confidence, Your Grace." Lord Stark deadpanned and the King laughed as Jon Arryn entered the stand and Lord Monford greeted him as well.

 

His own seat waited below and after taking his leave politely. Lord Monford went in search of it. He had much on his mind and some distance from the Usurper felt better than none at all. He preferred to avoid King's Landing when he could, but with Stannis Baratheon dead he could hardly ignore the benefit that came from an appointment as Master of Ships.

 

A benefit that might grow greater soon, Monford thought as his chest tightened with hope. He allowed himself a final glance at the royal box as he feigned looking over the crowd in general. He lingered on the box beside them where House Tyrell was sitting, or the one flanking the royal box on the other side which held the rest of House Martell. After all, everyone in the royal box was there by express invitation of the King or Queen, not that the latter was yet in attendance with her royal son. Sadly, the King had looked favorably on his mad son's sneaking out and believed Joffrey's claims that it was to thwart and attempt to steal Viserys' body rather than a petty attempt to disfigure it. The Prince of Tongues would be permitted to attend the tourney before being sent off to Casterly Rock.

 

Lady Jynessa had made no claims when she'd told him that he would find the Princess Lyarra's voice familiar and cherish the chance to hear such a fine performance. She'd just smiled in the knowing way of a woman who holds information that you do not, then she'd talked of what a shame it was that Lady Stark so disliked her husband's natural-born daughter. Talk had naturally drifted to Aurane's place in their family. Then it had ended with the Dornish matron casually noting that the poor princess wasn't even precisely sure when she was born.

 

On one hand, Monford had almost missed it entirely. He'd just assumed that Lady Jynessa was being a mother. It was a pity the girl didn't know where she came from. It was a pity in general for any child to be even half-orphaned. Besides, who hadn't wondered what woman could seduce Ned Stark away from his _famous_ honor?

 

Had he thought no more on it Monford would have simply joined the growing rumormongers who now felt sure it had to have been Ashara Dayne. The Red Viper's wife was certainly beautiful enough to have come from Dorne's brightest star. While she did look the very image of Lady Lyanna Stark, her features were far too refined to be only the product of the Stark bloodline itself.

 

Then he'd heard the princess sing and Ashara Dayne's ghost had blown away. Monford was damned glad that Aurane had jumped to make a fool of himself before anyone had noticed the look on his own face. He was sure, as pale as he already was, no-one could have missed his shock at hearing what he'd heard.

 

The Princess' voice was feminine, but her _expression_ , her sheer range and the way she was transported by her music was something he'd only ever seen once before. Something that had pushed him to truly look at her, and to do it without looking for Ashara Dayne or Lyanna Stark in her features. Instead he'd licked his lips and stared, finding Rhaella's straight, delicate nose, the razor sharp cheekbones that almost all of the Targaryen's had, and the full lips Rhaegar had gotten from his grandmother.

 

If Lord Stark had celebrated his bastard's nameday on the same day that he arrived with her at Winterfell, that meant she had to be four moons older than that _in the least_ to have been brought overland from Dorne. Four moons put her conception within two moons of Lord Stark's wedding to Catelyn Tully. That meant that Monford would be damned if the Quiet Wolf had found time to bed some unknown peasant beauty with Targaryen features, Rhoynish curls, and those lips and then haul her all the way to Dorne in pursuit of his sister.

 

How, after all, had the King's lost love died? Why, she'd taken a fever in Dorne, of course. No-one who supported the Usurper questioned it, as she must have already been ravaged and tormented into ill-health and the Dornish heat had to have been hard on a Northern girl. They found it a sad end to a sad song and left it, while loyalists like Monford were just happy to see the girl who'd brought their dynasty down was dead and the Usurper denied her.

 

 _Childbed_ , Monford thought with helpless glee and more relief than he'd felt since he'd seen Prince Viserys' body. He'd heard and seen that Princess Elia Martell was growing more and more unhappy in the capitol, if not technically unhappy with her marriage. Prince Rhaegar, meanwhile, was fond of his Dornish wife but neither passionate about her nor particularly happy to be married to a woman with such an uncertain womb.

 

Lady Lyanna had been young and very obviously healthy in her wild exuberance. At Harrenhal it had been obvious to everyone but the Usurper that she'd wanted nothing to do with the Stormlord. Monford had known Rhaegar personally. The Silver Prince loved stories and would have enjoyed the idea of riding in to save a maiden from an unwanted marriage. Add in that he was beguiled by the girl herself, unsatisfied in his marriage and desperate for more children, and Monford felt he knew everything he needed to.

 

Young Lord Eddard Stark, who was indeed an honorable man, perhaps loved his family more than anything else. It was apparent if you talked to the man for more than five minutes that the essential boredom of his character was only enlivened by his adoration of his wife and children. The Quiet Wolf wasn't so quiet if you could get him talking about his family. Should a man like that have come upon his sister, dying in her bed, and with a babe in arms, of course he would take the child as his own.

 

 _The best kept secret in the Seven Kingdoms,_ Monford Velaryon thought with glee, _was being kept by its worst liar._ All that was left to do was think of a way to talk to the Dornish about it soon. Monford was not going to risk doing that in King's Landing, however, let alone the Red Keep. The whole Crownlands was risky, stocked as it was in places with the Usurper's people and Lannister creatures.

 

No, he would send Aurane down to Dorne after this was over. He'd wait a moon or two, or perhaps more. If the Red Viper knew, well, it explained why he wasn't actively poisoning the lot of them. He had a better hope than chaos; a wife who could inherit the Iron Throne. If the Red Viper did not know, Monford would protect his Queen through secrecy until she'd birthed the Red Viper's child and was thoroughly safe from his temper.

 

Monford finally found his seat and was happy to see he'd arrived early enough that the area around him was only slightly occupied. It left him freer to think. He certainly had much to think on.

 

The problem, of course, was going to be the traditionalists. The Princess Lyarra was most definitely Rhaegar's daughter. They need only find proof or bend Stark's arm into speaking of it. He wouldn't do that while the Usurper lived, but if there was another option, the man could either drink himself to death soon or could be put into a position where the Stranger would visit sooner rather than later. Right now the Crown's support was shaky at best and the lion were weaker than they'd been since Lord Tytos was in power. It was time to act, or nearly so.

 

The problem with being a daughter, however, was the fact that you were _female_. When Daenerys might have been their only option and rumors of Viserys death first became widespread there had been a meeting of the other loyalist lords of Dragonstone and they'd spoken of it. The consensus was, painfully, that it would be nearly impossible for any woman to hold the throne and none were too certain that it could be done or they wanted to do it at all. The Kingdom needed a King.

 

With Stannis Baratheon dead with only female issue and Renly Baratheon disqualified because a male soulmate meant no issue, ever, that left the Martells with the next best claim to the throne. Doran would never leave Dorne. That meant his younger brother, the Red Viper, held the best claim. None of them had found that palatable, but that was when it was just Oberyn Martell himself. Oberyn Martell married to the Silver Prince's only living daughter was something else entirely.

 

 _"Time to pray for sons."_ Aurane's joke after the dinner, whispered between them with no other explanation, had hit him like a warhammer's blow.

 

That was the crux right there. The two things that would be most important. The negative was the Red Viper's reputation. The positive would be if the child the Princess carried was a boy. The first… Monford knew that they could only work on that with a concerted effort and if Oberyn Martell himself agreed to it. The Marks would help, as they leant instant legitimacy to any wrist they landed on. The latter? The man had fathered _eight_ daughters. He'd _only_ fathered daughters.

Sitting in the stands at the tourney Monford Velaryon prayed to the Mother, the Father, and every other deity he could think of that the Red Viper was done throwing girls. On the way back to the Red Keep, he decided to stop by the Godswood as well. In this case, he'd pray to everyone but the Red God, R'hllor, that the Princess Lyarra Targaryen was brought to childbed with a healthy prince. He'd only leave that particular bastard of a god out because prior experience had taught him that the Red God and his followers were best consigned to their own flames.

 

* * *

 

"How is my granddaughter?" Ned Stark asked and felt himself smile when Lyarra rolled her eyes at him and grabbed his wrist to lay his hand over her belly for the first time.

 

"How does it _feel_?" Lyarra protested. "Father, I'm fine. I'm not even showing, yet, and the babe is only restless when I'm hungry or too long on my feet. You worry as much as my Prince."

 

"The Viper could stand to worry more." The irritated voice of Ned's best friend broke in with a snort, but he offered a completely appropriate smile for Lyarra as he turned to both of them. "He should have damned well announced your condition properly, and you shouldn't have been riding into the city to begin with. You had a wheelhouse, didn't you?"

 

"We did, but with the unrest in the city it was decided it would be safer if I had the maneuverability of a mount." Lyarra replied uncomfortably as her father withdrew his hand and sat up again. "I came to the tourney grounds by litter this time."

 

Any other awkward comments that might be made were lost as the Queen finally arrived. She had come through the city in a small wheelhouse with a large guard of her father's men escorting her. Her son came with her, and when they exited, the crowd of smallfolk turned briefly to look at the wheelhouse that had been allowed to ride right up to the foot of the royal box.\

 

Ned stiffened in worry. He knew that the King had agreed with Lord Twyin's orders to send goldcloaks out to make sure it was clear that there would be consequences should any of the smallfolk hiss or boo or throw anything at anyone during the tourney. Ned himself agreed with it, though the peasant unrest worried him badly in general. His family had not maintained their rule for as long as they had by ignoring the common folk. Houses came and went, but the commons always remained, tending the crops, sowing the fields, and maintaining the prosperity of the land. Now would be when they saw whether the orders would be obeyed, and if they were not how far the peasantry was willing to go.

 

Ned was relieved when the orders were obeyed. He was both satisfied and disturbed that they chose to obey them in a way no-one had intended. It started with the front row of the crowd. Then it took off, spreading in dribs and drabs. Bit by bit the crowd turned their back on the Queen and the Crown Prince, standing and facing away from the field while Queen Cersei and her son mounted the steps into the royal box.

 

Ned stood with everyone else for the Queen and Crown Prince's entry. He wished he could just get Robb's insulting nickname for Prince Joffrey out of his head. Ned understood that the man was Lyarra's husband, but she never should have repeated _that_ to Oberyn Martell. The Red Viper had promptly repeated it to Lord Monford Velaryon, and then somehow it had ended up all over the Red Keep and King's Landing itself. Prince Joffrey was spoken of by the moniker more often than his name when the Royal Family was not present. Ned couldn't imagine that having the boy addressed as the Prince of Tongues in every piece of rumormongoring in the capital would help Robert's situation. At least not until he got another Heir, and Ned was worried about that.

 

He had no doubts as to _Robert's_ virility. Ned had spoken to Jon about that and the Hand of the King had confessed to attending the matter of all of Robert's known bastards. What he worried about was the _Queen_. Only three pregnancies in fourteen years of marriage? No miscarriages, and years without sharing anyone's bed? Cersei Lannister was about the same age as Cat had been when Rickon was conceived, so it wasn't impossible, but given the state of the royal marriage he wondered if the Queen's womb would rebel with her mind at the mere idea of giving Robert something that he wanted.

 

As Ned watched her descend from the wheelhouse it was obvious the Queen wished to remind all of her status and her beauty. She wore a gown of damascene silk that was all black background and an intricate pattern of cloth of gold raised above it in medallions made of intertwined antlers. It clung tight to her body, showing the womanly curves brought to her slender figure by the gods and childbirth, and the neck was a low v-shape that clung to the bare edges of her shoulders and plunged to reveal the pale globes of her breasts.

 

Her hips were wrapped in a broad wine-red leather girdle, tightly cinched, that featured square golden plates embossed with detailed lions. Around her neck a gleaming collar of intertwined golden links set with citrine, topaz, and garnet as wide as two of Ned's fingers sat catching every ray of light. Her hair was twisted up into an elaborate knot of golden plaits, and from it a golden braid ran over her right shoulder to rest like a lion's tail, tasseled in her cleavage.

 

As she walked into the box her eyes slid past her husband and Ned to where Lyarra and her two ladies stood, falling into precisely the proscribed curtsey rank demanded and no more. He knew instantly by the way the emerald green of the Queen's eyes flared that she was displeased with what she saw. He didn't have to ask why.

 

Ned knew nothing of fashion, but he was no more blind to beauty and its charms than any man. Queen Cersei stood, dripping in jewels, gold, and the dark colors of her husband's House. She was a pillar of wealth and decadent beauty, but it was the beauty and fashions of her choice.

Lyarra wore more of the indecent clothing her husband had chosen for her, sadly enough. Ned knew that she needed to embrace her new position in Dorne, he just wished that she hadn't done so in King's Landing. The dress his daughter wore was of white silk. Held at one shoulder by a thin silver cord it draped from there across her body and beneath the opposite arm. Gathered underneath the single strap, the excess fabric fell in a loose drape. A belt of palm-sized copper discus lay low around her hips. The silk itself clung to Lyarra's body, showing every dip and curve in her slender frame down to the silver sandals laced delicately across her feet and up her calves.

 

She wore no jewelry save for a new circlet and a tiny silver hoop in the lobe of each ear. The circlet was a serpent like the Viper's. It was made of silver, smooth and shining, and curled around her forehead until tail and head held a copper sun and golden spear between them in the center of her brow. No thicker than a quill's spine it had likely been quite inexpensive. Instead it was graceful, delicate, and highlighted her youthful beauty. Given how soon it disappeared into the untamed masses of his daughter's curls, which had been left to flow free down her back so that the ends pooled around her hips and thighs amongst the black and gold cushions on her chair, it also served to emphasize the contrast between her fair skin and dark hair.

 

Lyarra was the very image of youth, beauty, and purity. Beside her Gwyn wore a dress of pleated blue linen the color of a summer sky. Held up by two thin straps and with a black shawl draped over her shoulders covered in an entire field of intertwined flowers, and her own hair the pale blonde of the morning sun wrapped around her head in a crown of braids, Gwyn was herself a font of prettiness and girlhood. Walda sat beside her in a dress that was all layered pink ruffles beneath a boned bodice of ivory silk. Even she was terribly distracting to the eye, for that same bodice made it clear that the plump girl had a bosom as bountiful as every other lady in the royal box added together and multiplied by some uncertain sum.

 

Ned couldn't blame the girls for being angry. The Queen's behavior the day before had been awful. From what he could tell, however, she'd just been drunk and angry. Gwyn had assured him the day before that it had all been about a spoiled woman not getting her way. She'd said that the Queen was merely angry because Gwyn hadn't played Rains of Castamere when she'd all but said that was what she'd wanted played.

 

Ned found he couldn't bring himself to believe it. He had six children. He'd raised Gwyn for two years and watched her slowly become herself again from the terrified child who'd first come into his care. While he was man enough to admit that he couldn't always determine when the child was up to something, he had a certain feeling for it. He felt sure she knew something about the Queen she wasn't telling, and was beginning to _worry_.

 

What if his plan to keep Lyarra's most loyal friend with her was backfiring? He'd thought that one day Gwyn would gain the courage to tell the Viper all she knew and he would see a long overdue justice done. What if he'd been wrong? He hadn't considered what would happen if the girl threw in entirely with the Martells and decided to _join_ their plotting.

 

"Thank you for inviting me, Father." Prince Joffrey spoke, walking past his mother to give his father a proper bow and to grin brightly as he threw himself into his seat and lounged beside his mother, looking around her as he spoke. "I can't wait for the melee tomorrow. I can't think the joust will be very good, with so few of the best from grandfather's lands in the West coming."

 

"The jousts will do well enough without your Uncle or the Mountain and that lot." The King replied with a huff, but unbent a little to add, "You'd do well to watch damned close, boy. Joffrey, you were allowed here because you went out and did your duty to your father, the King, and you showed bravery. You want to assume my throne. You want to get your privileges back, you earn it with Ser Kevan. I had better be fucking snowed under with scrolls and have ravens dropping from the skies in exhaustion talking of your good deeds and progress, you hear me?"

 

"I will, Father. I'm a great warrior already, Mother says so, and nobody _dares_ fight me in the yard!"

 

How arrogance could be earnest in such a terrible young man, Ned didn't know, but he hoped that Robert stayed firm on making the boy either turn himself around or sending the boy to the Wall after Cersei delivered another male child.

 

"Good." Robert said shortly, then sat up straighter in his seat as he took a pull of his alehorn and addressed Ned's daughter.

 

"You're comfortable, Princess?"

 

"Yes, Your Grace, very."

 

"Good, I had cushions brought from the keep for the chairs out here. Don't know what the hell your husband was thinking in allowing you to walk in your condition. Not if you're swooning on the dance floor."

 

"I only walked once we got to the tourney grounds, Your Grace." Lyarra answered politely, but her gray eyes were uncomfortable as the King played court to her with exaggerated grace. "I wanted to wish him well and see him to his pavillion while he prepares for the lists, and I had to grant him my favor."

 

Robert fought a scowl.

 

"Lyarra nearly forgot." Lady Walda piped up with an innocent smile gracing her face and her lemon blond hair up in a knot at the back of her head where rag-curls didn't dance around her face. "The Prince had to remind her."

 

Beside Lady Walda, Ned spotted Gwyn working hard not to laugh as she busied herself tugging a large basket from underneath her chair. Ned noted with approval and amusement that she'd come well-stocked with treats. On one hand, it would keep Lyarra from growing faint or ill. On the other?

 

"I see you came well prepared, Lady Gwyn!" Robert let out a surprised laugh. "A good idea, but you needn't have gone to the efforts. There's all but a kitchen in the field behind us, and I've a whole ox roasting along with anything else you could want."

 

"You only say that because you haven't had her raspberry cream pasties." Ned raised his eyebrows.

 

Gwyn, in perfect good humor, removed a square package from amidst the various bowls and smaller baskets in the large basket. Unwrapping the clean toweling she produced several neat stars of beautiful golden dough that had been folded into fat pinwheeled pockets. Where the flaky crust folded over, pale cream, red jelly and fruit was visible.

 

Ned was all too happy to accept one, and watched as Gwyn and Lyarra split one themselves. The Queen abstained, talking instead to Lord Tywin who had just arrived. Prince Joffrey snagged two with an impertinent grin. Robert accepted one with a polite nod and then a noise of enthusiastic enjoyment that drew eyes as soon as he bit into it.

 

"Lady Gwyn, you've a _talent_." Robert assured her and Ned laughed. "Your gut's going to miss this one now that she's gone from Winterfell, Ned."

 

"Yes, but my _belt_ won't." Ned allowed and Robert burst out laughing at the rare joke from his friend as Randyll Tarly arrived to pay his respects.

 

"Lord Tarly," Robert greeted him. "I heard you had business with Ned. Take a seat."

 

Lord Tarly paused at the invitation, then a pleased smile touched his face at the acknowledgement. Ned knew it had more to do with the fact that the empty seat beside Ned was supposed to be Oberyn Martell's than it did with any honor being offered the Marcher Lord. Lyarra ignored it as she spoke to Lord Gargalen. Gwyn, for her part, was maintaining a polite and calm facade as she handed Lord Tywin Lannister one of the pasties, but Ned kept an eye on that exchange from the corner of his own vision. Fortunately it passed without incident and Gwyn and Walda went back to gossiping about the various knights.

 

"Lord Tarly." Ned clasped his hand and greeted him.

 

Tarly was a hard man, unkind in many ways, and difficult. He was also practical and dutiful. Ned appreciated talking to a southron who was applying himself so dutifully to the Old Gods now that his faith had shifted. It was not merely gratitude for the inoculation, nor a mere fad to Randyll Tarly. Instead he meant to do right by both his people and the Old Gods.

 

"Lord Stark. I was pleased to see you in attendance. I had heard tourneys were not appreciated in the North."

 

"We generally hold its wiser to keep those we might fight ignorant of the skills that would save our lives, but this was not an honor I could refuse."

 

"Ah." Randyll Tarly nodded. "I cannot say that I agree. I think honing their skill so openly builds character and competitiveness amongst the young."

 

"I've always found the young competitive enough on their own, but that is likely simply because I've known few young men outside of my own family."

 

"And the King, of course." The Queen drawled, looking back from the attendant she was speaking to with a face that was as beautiful and brittle as cut crystal.

 

"When I speak of my family, you may assume I speak of the King as well." Ned agreed, and meant it.

 

Robert turned and grinned at him, surprised delight reflected in every plane of his face as he reached out and clapped a hand on Ned's shoulder and turned to cheer the newest set of jousters. As he did his eyes briefly rested and lingered on Lyarra before the King visibly pulled them away. It was both a relief and an embarrassment Ned didn't know how to handle.

 

On one hand, Robert was yet _Robert_. A brother in all but name and his dearest friend. On the other, Robert was King and clearly used to getting his way above all else. Both facts combined to make his attraction to Lyarra and the way that he clearly saw her as a stand-in for Ned's sister terribly disturbing. The night before, after Ned had sought Robert out to hear his account of the events at the Queen's entertainment, Ned had finally had enough and brought it up in conversation.

 

There wasn't anyone in Westeros, and likely all of the world, that did not know that a Marked pair could not stray from one another. A man simply couldn't for his body was incapable of it. A Marked woman could not stray because the mental and physical torment of the act would be excruciating; any such contact would be rape.

 

Furious with his wife and furious to have been tied to her in the first place, Robert had argued that his intentions were pure. When Ned had tried to apologize for bringing his daughter at all, or encourage Robert to rush the Dornish party out of the capital rather than fruitlessly attempting to treat with them, however, he was afraid that his drunk friend had either happened upon or expounded on an idea that made him want to weep.

 

_"It's like the Dragonknight, Aemon- though curse the Targaryens, Ned, curse them! I'll see them all dead yet. Still, what I mean is, there was a time, you know, before? That Dragonknight was from before, and he'd loved the Queen Naerys, but she was wed to an unworthy man and he couldn't do a damned thing about it so he tried to protect her. Show her what a real man - a real knight acted like, is what I mean, Ned. Nothing underhanded or -nothing wrong. I'd never do that to a daughter of yours! Might as well turm- turn, I mean. Turn my eyes to Shireen or somesearch-somesuch, and I'm no kinfucker like the gods-be-damned dragons. But the point is that the Viper's worthless. Scum. He's not worthy, like Aegon wasn't worthy. That was the Unworthy one, I think. Damned wine, but you know what I mean, Ned."_

 

That inebriated rant had finally let Ned into the open door of Robert's mind. He wasn't sure he liked what he saw there. The longing, the jealousy, and all of it was disturbing given what he knew. It would have been disturbing anyway to see one man lusting after another's wife, but Ned could have at least divorced himself somewhat from it if it wasn't his kin.

 

That was not to be. Instead Ned watched with a kind of reluctant fondness and awkward embarrassment as his best friend played the gallant knight around Lyarra. The whole thing obviously made his daughter uncomfortable, as she was private and having a man she did not know solicitous over her health with barely concealed longing in his eyes couldn't have made many people comfortable. Still, there was nothing Ned could do about it, was there? At least he was being appropriate.

 

"Not all young men are competitive as they should be. They don't take pride in themselves." Lord Tarly was going on, however, anger and a shame so deep it was almost hate were reflected in his stoic face for a moment before the other man put himself back in order and shook his head. "That said, talk of cravens has no place in a tourney. My son will never compete. I won't let him, when he'd do naught but shame me."

 

"You've problems with your son, Lord Tarly?"

 

That surprised Ned. The man seemed unrelentingly harsh in a few ways that bothered Ned, but he was also competent and dutiful. A man knowing his duty and doing it whenever asked for all who asked it of him, no matter their rank, was a rare and valuable thing. Ned respected it in a person. Here he was, however, saying he wouldn't talk of cravens in one moment and insulting his son by calling him so in the next.

 

"I'd have thought everyone in the Seven Kingdoms had heard of my boy being a coward by now."

 

"I spread no rumors, nor do I credit them." Ned shook his head, and Randyll Tarly looked at him for a moment as if gauging his truthfulness before he relaxed.

 

They both took a moment to watch as a pair of young men, both newly knighted, ran against each other with too much enthusiasm and too little skill. They crashed down heavily on the turf and attendants from other knights, old enough and established enough to have squires or servants, rushed onto the field to see to them. Ser Daemon Sand, who was acting as Oberyn's squire, rushed out and Ned felt his lips turn up as he saw Arya out there.

 

She'd claimed she did not feel well and wouldn't be attending. Ned had made it plain that no-one had better see his daughter anywhere near the field. Now, looking out at the sandy blonde braid hanging out of the back of a tight cap and the almost silly number of freckles decorating the long face of a 'lad' scampering about in overlarge boys' clothing at Ser Daemon's elbow, he had to restrain a chuckle along with a sudden ache of painful memories bubbling up to the surface.

 

Arya was secretly playing a page, yes, but she was doing it well. Moreover, she was doing it without calling attention to herself. If Oberyn Martell was willing to permit it, Ned would say nothing on the subject. Not the least because it made his daughter so happy. At least she wasn't competing as a mystery knight. Perhaps the Starks would escape this tourney with no major disasters.

 

"Well, you needn't rely on rumors." Tarly went on after a pause and pulled a face. "I don't know what to do with the fat, useless lad. He showed he can be brave if he chooses. He opposed me and took his younger sisters to be inoculated when I was too busy listening to the Septon to realize… It's no matter. I couldn't even foster the boy out without risking embarrassment in the Reach."

 

"There are places beyond the Reach to foster a child, Lord Tarly." Ned offered, and at the man's surprised expression, felt heartened to add. "Truly, my Lady Wife has been bringing up the fact that we're now almost without a fosterling endlessly with me. I have already taken a girl into my wife's household from House Frey, and I will be thinking of other, Northern Houses to invite to foster in the future. If you've a wish for your boy to go north, I'll welcome Lord Sam into my home as Lord Arryn welcomed me into his."

 

"I don't imagine cowards live long when Winter comes." Tarly responded, and a slow, pleased smile spread over his face as he offered Ned his hand. "You've my thanks, Lord Stark, and I accept. Let the boy see how he likes a life of fewer books and less comfort."

 

Ned let the implied insult to the learning of the North pass and decided that he'd judge young Lord Sam when he saw the boy. He had to be around Robb's age, and getting him more company than Theon Greyjoy would be a good thing. After all, Lord Forrester's Heir and the Smalljon couldn't tarry forever in Robb's company.

 

Besides, hearing of Samwell, Ned couldn't help but feel the sympathy of one poorly prepared second son for another. When the details of his mistaken assumption came fully to light, along with Lord Tarly's threats should Sam's reformation not take place, his opinion of Randyll Tarly would take significant damage.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra gripped her father's hand in fear and excitement, the other hand curled unconsciously around her belly as Oberyn lined up for the joust for the fifth time. His first two opponents had been hedge knights. They were of little matter, though Lyarra had held out her hopes for both. Instead, they'd shown themselves no match for the Red Viper.

 

In his armor and his red surcoat, her husband sent all four men into the turf. He hadn't broken his lance on the first three at all, and even though it had shattered on the third's shield, the man had still gone tumbling onto the grass below. Now, however, his opponent was no-one to dismiss.

 

Ser Andar Royce was a tall man in the gleaming, but practical armor favored by knights of the Vale. He wore the black and russet of his house. His horse was a fine bay stallion, and the destrier stepped high with pride each time it moved. Across from Ser Andar on the lists, her husband lined up. His own borrowed horse was a dun gelding, but Lyarra could see the quality in its muscular haunches and fine legs.

 

As to why he'd chosen it, her husband had leaned in and whispered in her ear the night before that one of Ser Loras Tyrell's favored mounts was a mare, and it was currently in heat. Lyarra had stifled her outrage at that as they were supping with Lord Monford and both Lord Renly and Ser Loras were in attendance. Instead, she'd ignored the implication of borderline cheating and concentrated on talking with the Lady Shireen about the books they'd both read. The King's niece was a delight, and so totally unlike both of Lyarra's younger sisters.

 

While there was a great deal of kindness about Shireen, as there was about Sansa, she was not so much a lady in quite the same way. Lyarra instead found a unique person who held traits of all of her sisters and friends. Sansa's kindness and Arya's sharp-minded sense of curiosity mingled with Gwyn's loyalty and Walda's sweetness, and all of it had a dash of Lyarra's love of books and learning. It was a relief to turn away a little of her worry by talking with the King's niece.

 

Given their conversation, it was inevitable that the blue-eyed girl would notice Lyarra's worry.

 

"Prince Oberyn will do very well. He's renowned on the lists, even Father admired his skills at battle." Shireen assured her, her eyes turning sad for a moment before her stubborn chin stuck out and she added. "Father _never_ gave false praise."

 

"Nor much at all." The King observed with a snort, but then added with clear difficulty. "I'm sure it'll be fine, Princess. Only an idiot would risk a – a lady such as yourself unnecessarily."

 

"The loss would not be soon forgotten." The Queen saw fit to add dryly and the King's face reddened behind his beard.

 

Lyarra barely noticed. Lord Stark had reached out when the two horses lined up and wrapped his large, calloused hand around hers. She'd been more grateful for the gesture and the comfort then she liked to admit.

 

Oberyn's dun gelding was powerfully built and moved as well as the stallion it faced as they both began charging at each other, their hooves ripping up and tossing clods of turf. Oberyn's armor gleamed; copper scalemail under good steel plating and a heavy leather surcoat. The surcoat wasn't as intricate as the one he had worn on his entrance into the city or their wedding. Instead of a great mass of intertwined snakes, the leather was only worked in a single coiled snake rearing to strike over the center of his chest. It was old and scarred in a couple of places by the marks of weapons. His shield, featuring the device of his house, also bore the marks of experience.

 

An experience Lyarra watched her husband show the advantage of. Though Royce was a heavier man than he, younger and with more muscle on a broader frame, it was Royce who swayed and barely kept his saddle when both their lances broke on their shields. Lyarra barely breathed as they swung around to face each other again. On the second pass, Royce's lance skittered off Oberyn's shield and Lyarra's husband's struck true, forcing the other knight's shield back against his arm and unbalancing him.

 

The Vale knight came off his horse in a great clatter of armor. He rolled well when he landed upon the turf, however. When he rose it was fluidly and with a bow to the man who'd unhorsed him. Oberyn returned the bow fluidly from his saddle, which Lyarra noticed was decorated with a range of golden roses and a red viper slithering through them almost comically.

 

As Oberyn lined up for his fourth opponent of the day, Lyarra was startled to see another Kingsguard walk into the King's box. The man bowed to the Lord Commander, who bowed back with a smile through his snowy beard. Then the man turned and bowed the King, who barely paid attention for he was too busy scowling at the retreating back of Lyarra's husband as he set up for his next joust. None of these things surprised Lyarra nearly as much as the venerable old knight turning towards Lyarra's party, bowing, and addressing Gwyn.

 

"Lady Gwyn, forgive me if it's an impertinence, but I find myself with no lady to champion in this joust and I would have your assistance in rectifying this if you would permit it."

 

Lyarra seldom got to enjoy the sight of Gwyn truly startled. She found herself grinning at the rare sight of her friend's rich blue eyes going wide in shock and then blinking twice, her thick sienna lashes fluttering before a seldom-seen blush spread over her honey-tanned cheeks. A moment later and she'd fumbled for a moment before reaching up and pulling a long azure ribbon from her hair, causing the straight length of pale blonde hair to cascade down around her face and shoulders.

 

"I would be honored, Lord Commander, to have a knight such as yourself carry my favor." She seemed genuinely touched.

 

The old man smiled back warmly and offered her a deep bow after affixing the length of ribbon to his gleaming armor. Bowing once to the King and Queen, he left the box. Lyarra grinned at Gwyn, but Walda chose to take the cake.

 

"Well, now no-one else will dare ask for your favor for the rest of the tourney." Walda sounded disappointed for her friend.

 

"All the better." Gwyn replied in clear amusement. "The Lord Commander is impeccably polite, old enough to be my _grandfather_ , and won't be a bother. He seems the perfect sort of knight to carry any lady's favor."

 

"Gwyn, you've got _no_ sense of romance." Walda complained and Lyarra stifled her amusement just as the Queen leaned forward to comment.

 

The Queen looked over and Lyarra couldn't help but notice her green eyes straying to Gwyn with clear malice in their gaze. Earlier, Lyarra's father had said that the King merely thought the Queen drunk and spoiled. Gwyn had not played The Rains of Castamere as she wanted, so the Queen threw a drink in Gwyn's face. Lyarra hadn't contradicted her father. Gwyn had, after all, told them all nearly the same tale.

 

The problem was that, to Lyarra, it rang false. She knew Gwyn, and while she had faith her friend wouldn't lie to her, Lyarra was also familiar with Gwyn's habit of sometimes withholding information she felt that a person didn't want, need, or might be safer not knowing. She'd already done so once and gotten information that the Queen might not have liked the song Gwyn was going to sing because it was about House Parren, rather than House Lannister. She backed up Lord Stark and the King's theory that the woman was simply being petty. The problem was it just didn't sit right in Lyarra's mind.

 

Still, there was nothing Lyarra could do about it until she got Gwyn alone again. She had infinite experience and faith that, if she worked on her friend, Gwyn would tell her. It might be more difficult if Gwyn thought it was a secret better kept for Lyarra's own good. Lyarra only felt more firm on the subject of knowing if that was the case. She'd already dealt with one fact coming back to bite her on the ass because she didn't know of it, and Lyarra didn't intend to have that happen again.

 

Still, the important thing was that the Queen didn't make any attempt to disrupt the tourney or demean anyone. Instead Lord Tywin, face inscrutable, merely adjusted his arms on the rests on his chair. That was enough to cause the Queen's posture to change and her attention to turn back to her father. Relieved, Lyarra turned back to the joust.

 

* * *

 

It was exhilarating to be back in the saddle again, riding the lists. It would have been better on one of his own horses in a familiar saddle with no roses embroidered on it, but he could appreciate Willas' jape. Furthermore, he had plans for revenge. A little _implication_ here or there that, prior to being Marked, the Viper had indeed _'slithered through the roses'_ would be more than just punishment. It would infuriate Mace Tyrell and Willas, so pleased with his little prank, would be more than a little annoyed to have it turned back around on him.

 

He rode eight jousts, two more than any knight of reputation rode in the preliminary eliminations that went on in the first day of any tourney. He didn't mind the implied slight that came with four of those invitations. Two were far beneath him, but given the expressions on the young knights' faces and their links to the Usurper he took their challenges. It was satisfying to watch them tumble to the turf, having mistaken brawn and youth as the equal of experience and skill.

 

Any japes aimed at his choice to ride a gelding were silenced when Lord Loras Tyrell rode against Thoros of Myr in the last joust of the day. The priest rode a stallion, and the results were predictable. The Red Priest lost the joust before it even started. He was unable to keep his horse calm enough to make a decent lance strike or settle his shield and seat.

 

Oberyn was amongst those would would move onto the semi-finals on the third day of the tourney. The second day would revolve around the melee and a variety of other entertainments. Oberyn was hoping that his gamble paid off before the melee became his best option for Ser Amory Lorch's death.

 

He was frustrated that so far there'd been no word of the wastrel. He wanted the murderer's blood on his hands. He wanted to listen to the rattle of his last breath as it struggled in his chest. The sooner he claimed what little recompense taking a wasted life gave for an innocent life lost before it could truly begin, the better.

 

Oberyn acknowledged it a gamble, however. Loathe Rhaegar as he did, it was obvious that the smallfolk still idolized their Silver Prince. They might take matters into their own hands and kill the murderous coward themselves before Oberyn could claim his family's rightful share of the death. Even worse, some other lowly creature might warn the man. Then he would skitter back to the Westerlands and any hope of resolving this sooner would be gone. Without the wide net cast by having so many eyes on Lorch, however, Oberyn saw how little chance he had to find him.

 

He'd also hoped to perhaps bypass the Lady Gwyn entirely. He could gather intelligence from sources other than her now. There had to still be servants in the Red Keep who could provide him the name of the man who'd raped and murdered his sister and bashed his infant nephew's skull in.

 

Unfortunately, Oberyn's people had no luck there, either. His men at arms and the formidable Lady Gwyn had both reported that most of the castle staff were now imports from the Westerlands. Some came directly from Casterly Rock or Lannisport itself, others from households associated with and loyal to the Lannister family. Still, it was _stunning_ to realize how well the Lannisters had managed their slow takeover of the Red Keep.

 

From what Oberyn's people had gleaned, it had been slow going, with a good portion of the servants either simply being leftovers from the dragons' days, or appointments made by Jon Arryn or Stannis Baratheon. Then the Plague had arrived. In the days after the inoculation had made its rounds, when Jon Arryn was too much involved in his work to keep King's Landing fed and Robert on his throne the Usurper's lioness had dismissed the few servants that hadn't died or fled. Then she'd begun the mass replacement of staff with cronies whose first loyalty was to her.

 

Understandable, Oberyn allowed, if what Gwyn had suggested was true. The girl had maintained her innocence while Lyarra was awake. She'd spun a tale of having heard of the Lion Queen's thin skin, and how her fury and nervousness over anything she perceived as a threat to her children bordered on a madness of its own. A claim backed up by the story of the babes she'd murdered.

 

 _Truly_ , Oberyn thought, _the bitch takes after her father._

 

She was no lioness, either. There were lions in the desert, along the southern coast of Dorne. Large, golden, and dangerous, Oberyn had hunted them himself. As such, he could say with some experience that the Queen acted like no lioness in defense of her young or her place. If anything, she was a _jackal_. Cackling and laughing at the misfortune of others, she lingered around larger predators to pick at their scraps and then try and claim their kills were her own. After all, she relied entirely on the strength of others to do her bidding, didn't she? Whether it was her father's gold and armies she claimed as hers by right of kinship or the strength of the knights and thugs who did her bidding, it wasn't as if she had the strength to do more than throw a glass of wine in a girl's face.

 

It was a compelling argument for a petty, spoiled, evil child in a woman's body. Lyarra had not believed it entirely. That much Oberyn could tell. Still, she was tired easily and had drifted off to sleep against his chest as they spoke of it the night before. Oberyn had happily tucked her in bed before venturing out to try and tease some real answers from the little blonde. To his surprise, no teasing was required.

 

 _"The song I was singing was about House Parren. That's why she threw the glass of wine in my face, not out of pique at an indulgence refused."_ Gwyn's first words had been spoken to just Oberyn and his uncle; they were the only ones left in the solar.

 

 _"What about House Parren could so disturb Tywin Lannister's daughter?"_ Lord Gargalen had raised his eyebrows at Gwyn as Oberyn took in the small, satisfied smile tugging at the corner of the girl's lips and felt his own turn up as he coiled himself into a chair to wait and hear what she would say. _"As I understand they are currently both a loyal House, and one too weakened by an incompetent Heir and Lord to offer any threat to anyone."_

 

_"It's not what we are. It's where we're from."_

 

_"Oh?"_

 

_"House Parren has had two incarnations. One incarnation died out eighty years before Aegon began his conquest, leaving behind a castle run by a Lannister steward. I belong to the second incarnation."_

 

_"And how did this second incarnation come about?"_

 

_"Orys Baratheon and Argella Durrandon had four sons. The eldest became Lord of Storm's end. Davos Baratheon died an unwed knight. The third son died of a fever in childhood, but the fourth could not get on with his eldest brother at all."_

 

 _"An unfortunate theme in the Baratheon family."_ Lord Gargalen had observed _. "I heard from Lord Renly today that he is going to choose to watch his soulmate ride in the tourney tomorrow from amongst the squires to avoid sitting in his brother's box. He's still wroth with the King over his lost seat on the Small Council and the King's perceived slight and interference with the Lady Shireen's marital prospects. But go on, my dear, I'm interrupting."_

 

_"That's alright, my lord, I hadn't heard that Lord Renly would be avoiding his brother… Anyway, after much strife the youngest brother was sent away from Storm's End. He went to the Westerlands to earn glory fighting the Ironborn, who were raiding the coast in the weak years between when the last King of the Rock knelt and his son grew into a man and took his place. He and the small force of knights he brought with him were instrumental in a battle where the Ironmen were lured inland and their ships burned so they couldn't escape, and as a reward the Lord of the Rock granted Bellos Baratheon lordship over the original House Parren's lands, their castle, and his own daughter's hand in marriage."_

 

 _"Really?"_ Oberyn's interest had been captured and he'd watched as a smile as toothy and languid as any real well-fed lioness' had ever looked on the shores of Dorne appeared on Lady Gwyn's delicate lips.

 

_"Yes, Your Grace. Bellos took the name Parren for his House to further anger his brother, and tied himself utterly to the Lannisters. Since then, it's been a stern tradition for the sons of House Parren to marry Lannister daughters. If a Lannister of the Rock couldn't be had, then a Lannister of Lannisport would do, or a Lanny, Lancett, or Lancel. I'm the tenth generation of such marriages."_

 

 _"That explains why your Lannister look is so strong."_ Lord Gargalen had mused, but the girl had shaken her golden head.

 

 _"On the contrary, Lord Gargalen. I'm the very_ first _Parren to be born with blonde hair in all of the years since Bellos married his golden bride. My father's hair was black as coal and his eyes as blue as the Bay of Storms, as was his father, and his father's father, and both my father's sisters."_

 

That was how Oberyn had learned a secret that, if true, put him in better spirits than he'd been in a very long time. Just the _idea_ that the Usurper's only Heir wasn't his pleased Oberyn more than he could say. He found it amusing as anything imaginable that the man who'd smiled at the sight of his sister's mangled babes was pulling his beard out over the fact that his only Heir was a madman, and the Prince of Tongues wasn't even his.

 

It also explained neatly why the Queen would panic if Gwyn Parren was about to sing such a song in court. Especially since, as Gwyn explained, the song was one of seven verse and the last three mentioned just why the lion on the House Parren sigil was black. Something that would undoubtedly have been noted by someone if they even looked at Lady Gwyn herself for too long.

 

Her cheekbones and nose were pure Lannister, but her jawline wasn't quite sharp enough. Her brow was the proper shape, neither low nor high and graceful. Her hair was inarguably Lannister, though it was a shade or two lighter than the Queen and her twin's. Her form bespoke of a different mould than Queen Cersei's slender beauty, however. Oberyn remembered what Cersei Lannister had looked like as a girl of three-and-ten at the Mad King's court. She'd been a delicate, wispy thing with a build not entirely unlike Lyarra's. Gwyn had a way of holding herself and dressing that had made her look as lean as Lyarra, but the change to Dornish fashions had put a stop to the illusion. She was far from plump, but Oberyn was willing to bet she'd show a fuller figure, like the ladies of House Baratheon did, in a few years.

 

_"I have no idea who the whelp's father is, but he's no Baratheon. Mayhaps one of the Queen's cousins? He's got a Lannister look, and I see nothing else in him."_

 

Gwyn's curious suggestion was brought home simply by walking up into the Royal Box to claim his seat and take his bow. The Prince of Tongues was sitting beside his mother and doing everything he could to get his father's attention. It was working poorly, as the King's attention was evenly divided between Eddard Stark and Oberyn's wife. It did, however, highlight how nothing of the King was visible in the boy's slender form or almost delicate features.

 

"Your Graces." Oberyn gave the obligatory bow upon entering the box. "I hope you are all enjoying the tourney?"

 

"We were. You may as well stop blocking the view and take a seat." The Usurper grunted and the Queen's lips thinned as he spoke over whatever polite nothing she was about to spout.

 

"But of course, Your Grace." Oberyn replied and exchanged a nod with Randyll Tarly as he quit Oberyn's seat and left the box in search of his seat with the Tyrells.

 

While sitting down on cushions warmed by the ass of that particular martinet was not a pleasant experience, there were other things to admire about the moment. The look in his wife's eyes was one of them. Oberyn felt his lips curve up into a slow, seductive smile as he felt what had been swirling beneath her worry and the martial excitement of the tourney. It was an entirely different sort of excitement, and it seemed watching him joust was nearly as arousing to his wife as fighting the Freys had been.

 

"My Princess."

 

Oberyn took his wife's left hand and pressed a kiss against the knuckle nearly overwhelmed by the darkly gleaming, bloody ruby he'd slipped on her finger to mark them wed. Then he slipped her wrist over and pressed a slow kiss, then again, and again, to the sun-in-splendor and the direwolf inside it that sat on her wrist and Marked them both. She shivered at his touch.

 

"My Prince." Her voice dropped, breathy and husky as she greeted him, and he looked up into gray eyes that were as hot as steam.

 

"Are you enjoying your first tourney?"

 

"Aye."

 

"And did I do your favor credit upon the field today?"

 

"You did."

 

"For a man who claims to hold his wife's favor, I don't see one." King Robert's voice, tense and unhappy broke into their moment of privacy and Oberyn leaned back to shoot a smile at the king.

 

He felt Lyarra stiffen beside him and that flash of alarm was just enough to keep him from showing the king the _'favor'_ his wife had given him. The fat lout could do with the display. That said, Oberyn had no desire to humiliate Lyarra, and she hadn't Ellaria's freedom and daring. He suddenly missed his paramour, his match and equal in so many things, fiercely. It didn't change the warmth or the regard he felt for his young soulmate in the slightest, however, so he simply changed tactics.

 

"I would, Your Grace, however my wife's favor is currently beneath all of the layers of my armor." He rapped his knuckles against the leather of his surcoat, the plate, the mail, and the padding beneath in demonstration. "I wished to keep it near my heart."

 

"How very romantic." The Queen deadpanned.

 

"Isn't it?" Lady Walda agreed with the most earnest possible tone, and Oberyn had to restrain a laugh.

 

Lady Walda had been around catty women her whole life. She'd never been good at returning their comments in kind. As such, having a naturally cheerful personality, she'd cultivated an entirely different method of annoying those who mocked her. Walda's good cheer was real, but the sheer level of it she would pile on any situation could become quite purposefully obtuse and obnoxious if she felt the situation called for it.

 

"I always thought tourneys such a romantic idea, but I just didn't know until I came to the capital." Walda went on, her expression of gratitude and enthusiasm distilled into liquid happiness. "I cannot thank you enough, Your Graces, for allowing me the privilege of attending my Princess in your presence, or, of course, the Princess Lyarra for appointing me to her household."

 

"You're good company, Lady Walda." The King's smile was honest, and so were the eyes that settled into the great valley of her cleavage. "It's nice to have a lady about who is happy for a change."

 

"Who could fail to be happy in the presence of so noble a King?" The Queen asked, her mouth a sneer as she raked her eyes up the King in a mocking fashion.

 

Oberyn felt his own smile turn sharper yet. The King wasn't unaware that he was fat. That much anyone with a brain could see. Watching the Usurper's face redden behind his beard was hilarious. Watching Tywin Lannister take in another sign of how putrid the royal marriage that had cost him so dearly had grown was even better. The Old Lion's face was as cold and immobile as ever, but his green eyes seethed.

 

"A presence that would be far better had no-one wandered into it reeking of horse and sweat." Prince Joffrey contributed with a sneer, but his eyes were darting back and forth between his parents nervously as he aimed the comment at Oberyn.

 

"I suppose the smells of knighthood and even mock battle are most unfamiliar to a youth never squired." Oberyn drawled back casually, shucking his gauntlets to slide Lyarra's hand between his own so he could stroke her fingers and keep the waning fire inside her stoked.

 

He watched as the Prince of Tongues turned as red as his gaudy silks and waited to see if he had the intelligence to keep his mouth shut.

 

"I'm a _great_ warrior, just like my father."

 

Unsurprisingly, the misbegotten whelp did not.

 

"Indeed?" Oberyn prompted as he watched the King's attention turn from glaring at his Queen to looking at his son. The Usurper's eyes strayed up to where Ned Stark sat, stiff, silent, and uncomfortable with the whole display.

 

"Yes!" The Prince petulantly insisted, sitting forward in his seat with his hands tight against the arms of his carven chair. "None of the squires in the Red Keep will try their hand against me in the training yard. Even the Kingsguard don't dare spent more than a few minutes apiece sparring with me!"

 

From what Oberyn had heard this situation arose from the boy's own violent tantrums when he was not allowed to win. Judging from the pinched look on the King's face, he had not heard wrong. The Queen looked doting, but even her expression suggested she knew the boy's bragging was absurd. Fondly absurd, but she certainly didn't believe her son's claims.

 

"If that's the case then Ser Kevan should have no problem reporting back to me of your hard work and effort." The King held out his goblet to be refilled, his expression displeased. "Remember my words, Joffrey. Progress or _nothing_."

 

"I'll show everyone my worth, Father, everyone." The boy proclaimed.

 

"You had better, for what you've shown us so far has ruined plans and hopes older than you are."

 

Joffrey looked momentarily affronted, but rallied. Sitting up straight in his seat he watched as his father turned to Lord Stark. He glared at Lyarra and Oberyn when the King's eyes lingered on Lyarra on the way and stopped to narrow at the Dornishman. Oberyn turned in his seat, as though he hadn't heard any of the exchange nor paid it mind. Then, curling one arm around his wife's back he reached out with his other hand. That hand he rested on her belly, petting the babe within through her skin.

 

"Are you much tired, darling?" He asked, while behind him the King spoke to Oberyn's unasked for goodfather.

 

"Ned, you're sure you'll give no thought to your daughters?"

 

"Aye, not until they've flowered. Between the fear of another Mark and just giving Lyarra up, I've no intention of allowing them to go a moment sooner than I must, or to anyone less than what I judge worthy."

 

"And what do you judge worthy of your daughters' hands, Lord Stark?" The Prince of Tongues interrupted his father's speech with the Warden of the North, and his haughty nose was too high in the air to allow him a clear line of sight on the King who wasn't truly his father's exasperation.

 

"A fair man." Ned Stark looked massively uncomfortable. "A just lord, and a kind husband. I wish for happiness for all of my children, and safety."

 

"It is from power that all safety is derived, though, isn't it Grandfather?'

 

The boy now turned to the Old Lion it seemed. Oberyn petted Lyarra's stomach and waited for her answer.

 

"Aye, a bit." Lyarra answered his former question, she was obviously listening as he was.

 

"Well remembered." Lord Tywin allowed his grandson, then addressed Lord Stark. "Would you agree?"

 

"I would say stability is as important as power in any situation. A thundersnow is powerful, yet they are ever fleeting even in the worst winters."

 

Oberyn could have laughed aloud. Stark was no subtle man, but he wasn't quite that much of a fool. He knew where to strike. The Lions wanted a marriage with the North badly to counterbalance Oberyn's own marriage, and to stabilize their hold on the realm. Hinting that their very insecurity was what was keeping him away would burn the Lannister Lord as badly as if Aerys' ghost had come by with a tub of wildfyre.

 

"So, you want a powerful man with a stable seat and a good name?" Joffrey seemed ready to preen. "They are not so hard to come by, Lord Stark."

 

"Oh, look, Ser Domeric is next." Lady Gwyn observed with a girlish glee totally unlike herself.

 

" _Ooh_ , isn't he handsome in that dark armor?" Walda enthused. "I _love_ his cape."

 

"You and pink." Lyarra laughed fondly, then, after a tiny darting glance in his direction, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn he was sure was pure fakery. "Oh, please, forgive me."

 

"Indeed, I hope it is not our company you find so wearying, Princess." The Queen, who sat in regal silence in between everyone else's comments with the same air of bored irritation a wet cat might give those bathing it, commented icily.

 

"Don't be daft." The King shot back, and leaned forward with a concerned expression. "Princess Lyarra, if you're unwell, I'll send for the wheelhouse the Queen used and you may return to the keep without being taxed."

 

The Queen went rigid with insult and the Prince pouted angrily.

 

"That is not necessary, Your Grace, but I thank you for your gallantry." Lyarra replied gracefully and with a small, sheepish smile as she rested a hand over his on her belly. "I'm afraid the babe is just more taxing than I expected it to be. My Prince had a cot set up in his pavillion, just in case such an event might occur. I would hate to miss more of the tourney than absolutely necessary. Bran and Sansa alone would never forgive me, for they've demanded I write of every detail to them as soon as I may."

 

The King was grinning at the attention and the compliment.

 

"Well, I'm glad at least one Stark properly appreciates a good tourney. Maybe there are more out there somewhere? Ned, you'll have to bring more of your family down the next time you're in the capital. Don't let it take you another nine years to visit, either, dammit."

 

Oberyn got up, offering his wife his arm and leading her down the stairs and around the back of the stands to where the pavilion awaited. At the bottom of the stairs Daemon and Ser Arron waited, along with the 'page' who'd helped Daemon in his duties as Oberyn's squire for the day. Arya Stark grinned beneath her fake freckles and gray eyes were bright, but she kept in character and said not a word that might have given her away. Oberyn could tell that she was eager to relate every one of her triumphs of the day, small as they might seem to him now, to her favorite sister. Having his own plans for Lyarra, Oberyn decided to head that off.

 

"Ser Daemon, you have a niece and a younger sister as well." As they stepped into the pavillion he retrieved a few coins from where the clothing he was going to change into had been set aside for after the tourney. "Take our page along and choose some gifts for them and find something for the Lady Arya at the merchant's fair."

 

"Mayhaps a set of throwing knives?" The Bastard of Godsgrace offered innocently enough and as Arya's slightly suspicious eyes lit up, Oberyn shot the man a look and handed his ex-lover a couple more coins to cover the cost.

 

"A set fit for a Lord Paramount's daughter, in that case."

 

Smugly, Ser Daemon Sand took his charge and left Oberyn alone with his wife. A moment later and he found himself dragged forward into a searing kiss by his own surcoat. Grinning into the kiss Oberyn got both his hands underneath his wife's thighs and lifted her up onto the trestle table. When they finally pulled back from the kiss he hovered overtop her, grinning as her hands went to the leather buckles that fastened his surcoat on, and then let out a surprised bark of laughter when she once again surprised him utterly with what she had to say.

 

"Thank you for not showing the King that _so-called_ favor you took off me earlier."

 

"It's not my fault you forgot to bring so much as a ribbon or handkerchief to bless your husband in combat." He laughed back at her as she reached beneath his surcoat and claimed back the lacy scrap of fabric that was hidden underneath. "I shall have to write Lady Stark of the failings her household inflicted on mine wife. Her responsibilities were neglected."

 

He had lied about how well hidden it was, but who could blame him?

 

"A decent knight would never take a lady's _smallclothes_ as a favor!"

 

"But I'm not decent, I'm a no-good, duplicitous, poisonous, _licentious_ viper, am I not?" He began sucking a mark to the surface of the skin on her neck, where she couldn't easily see it without a mirror.

 

"It has its moments." Lyarra moaned softly as his hands slid beneath her skirt.

 

Grinning at the inherent permission and approval he'd been given, Oberyn pulled back and began to enthusiastically tug at the fastening of his armor. Stealing a kiss as she stood again, Lyarra began to help him with the task. Three hours later, after lovemaking and a short nap, both washed up with the pitcher and basin. While Oberyn changed, he sincerely hoped that his brother planned to hold a tourney to celebrate his marriage properly once they were back in Dorne. His wife did appreciate them ever so well.

 

* * *

 

Lady Olenna Tyrell stifled her considerable amusement at the sight before her. She had no patience for the smug viper who had crippled her grandson. That said, it was always amusing to watch Lord Tywin Lannister look constipated for some reason other than his uncooperative bowels and the rigors of aging.

 

Besides, Lady Olenna Tyrell had to admit that, if her oafish eldest had to throw a party, he was at least throwing one in good taste this time. The King had decided to spend the first night of the tourney not feasting, for once. He'd already held a midday feast essentially on public view underneath an awning on the tourney field, and so now he dined with his foster-father and foster-brother. No doubt he was trying to recreate the golden youth he so obviously longed for.

 

It was more than a little aggravating to think of all of the lives, gold, and chaos wasted to put their current lout of a king on the throne. Not that any of the madder Targaryens were any better. Quite a few were worse. The difference, she supposed, was on the stability of what was to come after. At least Aegon the Unworthy had possessed a decent successor. Had the Fat Dragon not made a disaster of the whole thing by legitimizing his bastards, well, there might have been a proper peace following that lush.

 

Their current fat king, Stag though he might be, was a worse prospect even than Aegon the Unworthy, with just as much potential for disaster. Robert, first of his name, hadn't a Dareon the Good of his own. He did have a plethora of bastards who might be decent people, but since when did that matter in a king? Olenna knew well enough that the success of a reign depended more on the proper mix of intelligence, ruthlessness, and reasonable human decency than anything else. Well, that and luck of course, and wasn't that just a fickle commodity to get your hands on?

 

"You look well this evening, Lady Olenna."

 

"I look about as dead as you do, you mean, and no more." Olenna snorted and looked at where Tywin Lannister had lowered himself into a chair across from her. "So why don't we both ignore the inherent idiocy of saying either of us is getting prettier or healthier with age and get on with it?"

 

The barest hint of amusement touched the cold hazel-green eyes of the Old Lion and the most powerful man in Westeros nodded his head at her as he accepted a glass of wine from a passing server. Olenna did the same, though hers was a mild cider. It all looked like Arbor Gold, and that was quite good enough for her. She'd have a stiff drink later when she wanted to nod off, thank you.

 

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Queen was planning to be in attendance, was she not, Lord Tywin?"

 

"As a wife and a queen, my daughter had other duties that recalled her from the pleasure of your family's company. She sends her apologies."

 

"Oh, I'm _sure_."

 

Olenna didn't need anyone to spell out the fact that Lord Tywin had issued orders to the effect of getting the King back into the Queen's bed, or woe betide his daughter. The fact that the girl herself wasn't wise enough at one-and-thirty to see how precarious her position was just made the situation more delicious. Little as Olenna liked Tywin, she implicitly respected his ruthlessness and competency. Whatever Queen Cersei liked to think, she was not her father come again with some rearrangement of features. If she was, she'd have already had a dozen black haired, blue eyed children and who cared about the King's whores? Her neck and her children's future would have mattered more than her pride.

 

Instead Olenna sat and watched. She could only lament sadly over her own family's current issues. There could be no bid for the throne or greater power in the Game while they were working just to quell peasant unrest, reorganize and subdue religious upheaval, and shore up their own seat as Wardens of the South.

 

"Right now I'm more interested in your youngest child, however." Olenna sipped her cider and pointed with her smallest finger towards where Tyrion Lannister was draining a goblet of wine in a manner suggesting fortification and staring at a small knot of figures across the garden of the rented manse where House Tyrell was throwing its little party.

 

By Mace's estimates it was an intimate gathering. Only two-hundred figures drifted through the landscaping and around the pools of the walled enclosure. A small group of minstrels played by a relatively small stone dance floor. The food and wine flowed, but it was actually tasteful for once. Olenna decided she'd be taking the steward of this particular manse back to Highgarden with her. The man had his uses if he could convince Mace of what taste actually looked like and then leave her son thinking the restraint had been his idea.

 

"I had thought your family's interest in him was quite exhausted after you turned down two separate marriage offers in relation to Tyrion."

 

"A seat in close proximity to the Small Council and a Plague can rearrange anyone's prospects, even a dwarf's."

 

Tywin inclined his head just slightly and sipped his own wine. He offered no other comment. Olenna was satisfied with that.

 

"I would have thought the King's Counter too busy to engage in such frivolities as one of my son's soirees."

 

"I have found my youngest child always finds time for some frivolity. This is more savory than most."

 

"Why, Lord Tywin, I believe that was _almost_ a compliment. I shall have to tell Lord Tyrion so he can have it graven in stone." Olenna smiled back as dryly as the Old Lion had commented and he silently raised his glass in a mocking salute to the Queen of Thorns.

 

She needn't ask why he'd come to sit beside her. He disliked her for being a, _'grasping, ungracious, harpy of bad reputation in her youth.'_ Olenna, by the same token, found Tywin Lannister to be a cold, priggish arse too conceited by his own intelligence and power to make tolerable company in almost any instance. They both, however, were old, tired, irritable, and quite done with the idiocy of those youths that they constantly found themselves surrounded by. She could only imagine what the most competent Hand of the King in more than a century felt at having a grandson everyone knew was mad, and a daughter the court gossips were starting to say was fraying at the seams of her mind as well.

 

Cersei Lannister's little display at that party in the Queen's ballroom had been diverting. Alerie thought that it was a display of bad upbringing. She hadn't so much as called the Queen a spoiled brat, but it was implied.

 

Olenna found her pretty, kind good-daughter as annoying as she found her pleasant. Her insistence on sweetness over intelligence would never cease to grate. That said, in this instance, Olenna thought she might be onto something. Not with the idea that the woman was throwing a petty tantrum over the Parren girl's refusal to indulge her with the song she wanted, mind you. Rather in the sense of word choice.

 

Spoiled meant _rotten_ , and when something _rotted_ , it _decayed_. Since Cersei Lannister's two youngest children had died of the Plague, she had steadily grown less reliable. Her ability to restrict her negativity towards her husband and the venom of her words towards the King to private situation was ebbing away. She drank more. She undermined herself as much as King Robert. Meanwhile, so occupied had she been with her grief that she'd failed to even hover over her horror of an eldest properly. That had been what gave him the freedom to become the Prince of Tongues and leave the court whispering that he was as mad as Aerys the Second ever had been.

 

That rot didn't include the same kind of abject, purposeless cruelty that Joffrey Baratheon displayed, however. Nor did it lend to putting herself into situation where she would be mocked. Queen Cersei was being mocked and spoken of with disgust for throwing a glass of wine in the face of a girl of no status or real wealth. She was being derided as drunk and childish. Olenna knew the woman well enough by reputation and from time spent at court to know she hated nothing more than mockery and, in general, expected the world to kiss her shapely ass.

 

Olenna was quite sure that there'd been something more to the situation. She was also quite intent on finding out. The best way to do that would be to watch and listen, and if Lord Tywin chose to sit beside her while she did this, well, he'd get around to trying to pick up talks about trade again soon enough. House Stark's endless droning about Winter was coming true again, and as a result, the Westerlands would have to buy in food.

 

Olenna honestly shouldn't have found the situation amusing. She was, honestly, a little wistful. It would have been nice to pull the Old Lion over a barrel and fuck him over inflated food prices. They would have certainly enjoyed the gold, not that the Tyrell family was lacking in it.

 

It just wasn't prudent to send a large amount of food out of the Reach just after a Plague and with Winter coming. Sadly, just when Olenna had been hoping she would see their family make a dynamic move, the time for prudence had arrived. It was a terrible cliche given her age, but the fact of it remained. Until the smallfolk were properly pacified and the Faith situation stabilized, their own position wasn't assured. They would not fall from Highgarden because they were on an orchard ladder reaching for someone else's crown.

 

 _Pity_.

 

Olenna watched in amusement as the newly fortified Imp made his way across the dance floor. Short limbed and awkward as his body was, he was at least fit, Olenna noted. The scar across his face, the deep score of a lash from his days as Lady Lysa Arryn's prisoner, didn't help his already appalling looks. It did lend him a rakish air, however, that made his ugliness seem more deliberate and less the horrible accident of fate that it was. None of it made the briefly appalled look on Lady Brinda Kidwell any less amusing.

 

One of Margaery's friends, Brinda Kidwell was flighty and unintelligent in many ways. Her vanity made her observant, however, and her admiration of those more beautiful and powerful than she made her useful. As such Olenna had been agreeable to having the girl of six-and-ten come along as her favorite granddaughter's spy on their trip to King's Landing. Now it was funny to watch the way her face contorted.

 

Beside her she could practically feel the displeasure rolling off Tywin's otherwise perfectly stoic form. More than anything the man hated being laughed at, but what was more a joke than a half-man asking a beautiful young maiden to dance? It was no matter what his name or his wealth, he would still only be a dwarf. It was just as well that he wasn't actually asking the Kidwell imbecile to dance; she'd have probably fainted.

 

Instead, to Olenna's fascination, the half-man made his bow to no other than the young blonde maiden who'd bearded the Queen in her own den with a song. To Olenna's amusement, the Lady Gwyn managed to demure successfully. Moreover, she did it in a way that had the dwarf offering a game smile. Whatever the girl said next produced a curious expression on Tyrion Lannister's face, but his reaction was forestalled by a sickly grin.

 

She didn't blame him at all for his expression. Prince Oberyn had noticed the stunted lion sniffing about his wife's lady-in-waiting. The Viper had slithered up on the lion unawares and now they were engaged in some kind of wordplay that likely consisted of the Lannister trying to keep his attention wholly on his drink and Prince Oberyn's hands while Prince Oberyn attempted to distract the annoyance from said task. Or, of course, he could merely be baiting them.

 

Olenna took a moment to wish that her deafness was entirely feigned rather than mostly feigned. She would have enjoyed knowing what quip the ever sharp-tongued dwarf had managed to throw at the Red Viper to narrow his eyes so. Likewise, she would have _loved_ to have known what was said that turned the dwarf's face so stony.

 

Eventually Tywin got up and left. He took his leave from the party, then, pleading the responsibilities of his office as the new Master of Laws. Mace's pride was pricked by the reference, of course. Her oaf of a son had gone from being dismayed beyond words by Loras' male soulmate to deeply fond of Renly within the space of a few moons in his usual fashion of liking anyone of sufficient rank who liked him. Soon after the dwarf left as well, having lifted a bottle or two of wine on his way out with his particular brand of shamelessness.

 

Olenna got up and made her way over to where the Princess Lyarra had retired to a comfortably padded settee after sharing two slow, stately, careful dances with her husband. The girl's expression suggested she'd enjoyed them very much, and Olenna didn't know whether to pity her or admire her for having made something resembling peace with such a husband. Either way, her personal preferences had to bow to reality, and the Plague had made demands of all of them. In this case, it was finally bowing to Willas' insistence that the enemies of their forefathers would be better as allies.

 

"Princess Lyarra, you look lovely this evening."

 

"Thank you, Lady Olenna, you look lovely as well."

 

"For a dried up old husk of a woman, you mean?" Olenna chuckled at the horrified expression on the girl's face. "I don't have enough time left in the world to waste it on meaningless pleasantries."

 

"I'm a _Stark_." The Princess raised her eyebrows. "What makes you think I know any?"

 

Olenna felt her lips try to twitch into a smile at that.

 

"I heard you and your sister have direwolves. Are they really as big as a pony or is this just the men of the North attempting to exaggerate the size of everything, as it the wont of men?"

 

"They're only pups now, though large ones, my lady. Their mother was dead when we found her with her litter, but she was the size of a small horse. We found an old book in the library at Winterfell that suggests they take three or four years to fully mature, and right now Ghost and Nymeria are but a half-year old."

 

"Which makes them?"

 

"About the size of a boar hound."

 

"Hm." Olenna gave the girl a mock-severe stare. "Should you ever have reason to bring them to Highgarden, I shall be vexed with you unless you are _extremely_ firm with my grandson Willas about the fact that he is _not_ allowed to have one. Those hounds of his are quite enough."

 

The princess relaxed slightly and Olenna sat back, quite intent on taking advantage of that fact. The girl's gray eyes were luminous, as was her fair skin. In white, she was a winter ghost gleaming in the torchlight. A perfect vision of youthful beauty, and Olenna wondered how much advantage she could take of the youth as the beauty fought the sleep the babe growing in her belly clearly wanted to push her into.

 

"Nymeria is yours then?" She asked the bastard-turned-princess. "A good political choice, though it may become confusing with your future stepdaughter sharing your beast's name."

 

"Nymeria is actually the Lady Arya's wolf. Ghost is mine." Olenna watched as she held out and turned over her wrist to show her Mark. "After we found her I couldn't help feeling the Gods meant it to be."

 

"So the real wolf is white with red eyes as well."

 

The red eyed wolf on the black circle stirred something in the back of Olenna's eyes, though she couldn't place it. Nor did she find her eyes drawn to the gleaming red sun around it, and the golden spear that pierced it. Instead she asked permission and turned over the girl's hand, examining the enormous ruby that graced her finger and the diamonds that framed it in a heavy golden setting.

 

"Well, whatever else he is, Prince Oberyn isn't _subtle_ , is he?"

 

"Alas, that is more in the line of my _brother's_ talents." Prince Oberyn inevitably joined them at that moment, well before Olenna could make any progress. "Lady Olenna, congratulations on the party. It is… _almost_ interesting."

 

Oh, well, at least she could have some fun with this. That had been her whole objective for the evening. Mace could fritter away gold playing the social butterfly. Once she'd agreed with Willas' scheme she'd also agreed to help him see it through. If nothing else, she'd get to enjoy the look on the Red Viper's face.

 

"Having never met Prince Doran, I'll have to take your word for it." Olenna snorted. "As to the party, I'll take its dullness as a compliment. I can only imagine the kind of entertainments you find interesting."

 

Olenna sat back in her own chair as she watched the man all but slither down next to his wife, his hands wandering over her waist and hips until she claimed both in her own and drew one arm around her before relinquishing the other hand. The snake immediately rested his hand over the girl's belly. She gauged what she thought of the gesture and decided it was one of genuine pleasure. She'd assumed earlier that his handsiness around the King was just revenge. The murdered princess' brother rubbing the Usurper's nose in the fact that he was wedded, bedded, and had planted his seed in the belly of Lyanna Stark's doppelganger.

 

The slightly more settled expression in those reptilian black eyes undid that theory. The hand curled over her belly was fond and protective. She supposed it wasn't surprising to see in a man who acknowledged and personally raised his eight bastards. The man had to be fond of children, especially his own. She decided to believe the rumors that he'd nearly quit the capital, or at least sent his bride from it, in a display furious overprotection when the girl's swooning had announced her condition.

 

That had potential. Just because they couldn't make a play for the throne this generation didn't mean there weren't generations to come that could not be bound by marriage. Olenna had no intention of tying her family to the Prince of Tongues, and she had a strong feeling that there would be no more issue from the Queen. That left the King's bastards, and there was no way that the Iron Throne would treat them better than their father. The realm itself would rebel again, first, and that would present opportunities for anyone with a strong block of allies.

 

Dorne was now allied by marriage, willed so by the Gods, with the North. The North was allied with the Riverlands by marriage. That was three of seven kingdoms, and if Olenna wasn't mistaken - and she wasn't - Monford Velaryon was cozying up to the Martells now that the Beggar King was no more than rubble. Who was surprised, given that he was the unofficial head of the remains of the loyalists and all that was left for them to support were either the absurd rumors of a Targaryen Princess riding around the Dothraki Sea… or the next closest leftovers of the Targaryen blood in Westeros.

 

Yes, House Martell was in a _very_ powerful place. Olenna didn't like not being in complete control of things, but she was old and she admitted it freely. Willas wished to act, and it was his life these decisions would rule. He and the others should get a say in it, as little as she wished to let go of the reins now, they needed to be ready to bury her when that day came. They wouldn’t be if she didn’t let them have and use power of their own.

 

"Alas, most interesting entertainments are now barred to me." The man admitted with a smirk and Olenna caught sight of a pale, sharp elbow jabbed into the man's ribs covertly and felt her own amusement. "Still, I am not incapable of making my own fun."

 

"Take an old widow's advice, Princess, and _worry_ when a husband smile's like that. Nothing good can ever come of it."

 

"I wouldn't say that no good can come of it." The Stark girl blushed and briefly brushed her hand over the one her husband had curled over her belly.

 

Olenna recalled the sentimentality of her first pregnancy. She recalled all of her pregnancies. Who could forget that kind of discomfort?

 

"Say that after however many hours of labor the babe puts you through is over." Olenna huffed out a breath in dark amusement. "You'll be sweating, bleeding, and cursing to push a trueborn heir out and the men will have fled to go hawking."

 

"A foul lie that is only mostly true." The Viper shot back. "I have not abandoned a woman to bear my babe unaided since Sarella was born, and I was not so lucky as to be informed of fatherhood before her mother arrived at Sunspear and put her into my arms."

 

"So you didn't leave the castle for your," Olenna caught herself before she called the dead woman a whore, but still waved her hand dismissively. "Paramour's labors? What a difficult job you had, pacing the halls!"

 

"On the contrary, I delivered the four youngest of my daughters myself."

 

Olenna paused to look the man in the eyes. He looked back readily and Olenna found herself unsure whether she was annoyed or impressed. She decided she was both.

 

"I suppose some men just aren't satisfied to make the ordeal more unpleasant from a distance."

 

Princess Lyarra couldn't quite hide a snicker at that, and the Viper managed to look affronted even as he bowed his head and acknowledged the hit.

 

"I must extend my thanks again to your grandson for his loan of horse and the gift of the tourney saddle. They served me well today."

 

"Willas will be pleased to hear it. He wants closer relations between our Houses and he's finally worn me down on the subject."

 

"Indeed?" Black eyebrows rose towards dense black hair, the silver invisible in the torchlight. "I am pleased to hear that, and I am sure that my Prince shall be as well. I will write Doran immediately. Shall I express my gratitude and pleasure for this overture to your son, as well?"

 

"Mace isn't as practical a man as I might want him to be."

 

"I am _heartbroken_ to lack the regard of such a lord."

 

The Princess hid it fairly well beneath her skirt, but Olenna still saw her dig her heel into the top of the Red Viper's foot. Clad only in sandals as they both were, that had to have hurt. Olenna decided she could almost like the girl.

 

"Show it by inviting Willas to visit you in Sunspear." Olenna stated bluntly, setting the trap she'd laid with humor and waiting to see if the Viper bit. "After all, you need not fear your niece attempting to seduce him or the awkwardness that would cause."

 

Indeed, though Willas had been tempted by the idea once or twice, he'd ultimately decided firmly against any of Arianne Martell's old machinations to try and wed him. In fact, believing that anyone would automatically share such plans was what had gotten the girl killed. Willas had received a few of her letters and responded in secret out of curiosity and the need to keep information channels open, but he'd never intended to wed the girl and help her claim Doran's seat.

 

First of all, why would Olenna's grandson want to trade his own power as Lord Paramount to be a Dornish Prince Consort? The last time a Tyrell had foolishly tried to lord it over the Dornish he'd ended up in a bed of scorpions. Arianne Martell had wanted power for herself without even knowing what it was, so she definitely wouldn't have been mature enough to share it.

 

Trying to wed Dorne to the Reach would have been politically and militarily impossible. That meant Willas would have had to give up his inheritance to Garlan for the girl. A girl who'd given up her maidenhead at fourteen and was notoriously promiscuous, at that. Thankfully, Olenna's grandson was intelligent enough to see idiocy when it was waved around in front of his face. She was just regretful that the Darkstar was enterprising enough to find a raven well-trained to fly out of sight before roosting at a location he could later retrieve his princess' letters from, manufacturing a fake plan for the girl to run away to Highgarden that he'd then used to kidnap and wed her himself.

 

The fools in motley were ever so much more amusing than the ones who had, or wanted crowns.

 

"No, I need not." The Viper replied stiffly and Olenna took a moment to appreciate having prodded a wound effectively before he went on in a warmer tone. "Willas is always welcome. You may extend my invitation for him to visit whenever he chooses. You are, of course, also invited Lady Olenna, and with as much of your delightful family as you might choose to bring along."

 

"How thoughtful you are." Olenna smiled slightly and turned to the brunette who was fighting not to doze against her husband's side. "Isn't he?"

 

"Very, and always at moments when it is least expected."

 

"Well, you're certainly as earnest as any Stark born." Olenna sighed and turned back to the prince. "Still, Willas will happily accept your offer. He's been pushing for an excuse to meet your daughters for the last year, and having seen the way the smallfolk throw themselves at your feet, I have to admit that he's right. We need a marriage in the family that will settle the commons."

 

"I don't catch your meaning." The Princess blinked apologetically while the Prince was looking warrier by the moment.

 

"You don't think the King got the gold to pay back Lord Stark from the Lannisters, do you?" Olenna drawled, smiling slowly. "The King's already agreed to legitimize whichever one of the Sand Snakes Willas takes a fancy to. Since he says you're already dear friends why _not_ make him the son your own loins can't seem to engender?"

 

Later that night, her joints aching and her arthritis acting up, Lady Olenna Tyrell would still take the time to employ her faded skills at drawing to sketch out a picture of the expression on Oberyn Martell's face for both her own and Willas' amusement.

 

* * *

 

 

"Bran!"

 

The appropriate greeting of a lord for his returning brother lasted all of half a minute. Rickon's shriek of joy and Shaggydog's decision to race around the Riverlanders' horses put paid to any hope of dignity. The party was made up of a dignified older knight in dark mail with a commanding presence, six men-at-arms that looked to include two young household knights, and Bran. One of the knight's horses spooked and ran right back out the gate with its rider shouting obscenities and the older middle-aged man who could only be the Blackfish scowling at his back and yelling at him to run the horse around the outer wall until it calmed and then bring it back inside.

 

"Rickon, Robb, Sansa!" Bran grinned and shouted back as his own nameless wolf raced out to cavort with Shaggy and Lady. Greywind had enough dignity to stay by Robb's side, at least for the moment. "I _missed_ you!"

 

Though his brother was wearing a miniature coat of fine chainmail that Robb assumed was a gift from their grandfather, his little surcoat was white and the wool embroidered with the gray direwolf of House Stark. He looked proper. Robb felt a moment's grief that his little brother was growing up, and slight jealousy that Bran had a freedom he never would. It passed quickly as he thought of the letter he'd received that morning.

 

"I missed everyone, too!" Bran allowed Rob to haul him down from his horse with nary a protest, accepting an embrace and then allowing Rickon to be shoved into his arms. "Sansa, you look nice!"

 

"Thank you!" Sansa laughed and bussed her brother on the cheek, running her hands down the rich river-blue silk of her sideless surcoat. The dress she wore under it was high-necked, gray, and Northern in style. "The material was some we ordered for Lyarra's trousseau but it didn't arrive in time to be made up."

 

"It looks nice with your hair."

 

"Well, he's got the gallantry down." Robb observed and offered the man who had to be his great-uncle a bow as he watched his mother pull back from an unusually emotional embrace and exchange of greeting. "Ser Brynden, it's an honor to meet a man of your reputation and to welcome you as kin to Winterfell."

 

"Well met, Lord Robb."

 

Before Robb could think of anything to say to properly impress the intimidating figure standing in front of him, there was a clatter from the side of the courtyard. The Smalljon, Torrhen Karstark, and Theon were all behind him in the proper order. Keavan Forrester had begged out of the meeting to decrypt a letter from his father.

 

An odd habit of House Forrester was encrypting their letters with complex math and strange symbols. According to his friend it was something his father had begun with his brothers during the Rebellion, but had kept up as a game with his children. Little marks a the top of a letter said whether they were urgent, and must be decoded immediately as they were serious, or if they were just a family letter and could wait. The small red spiral at the top left corner had prompted Robb's friend to immediately sit down with his strange, arcane decryption tools and begin work on the letter when it had arrived less than an hour before.

 

"Lord Robb!"

 

"Lord Keavan?" Robb turned, shocked at the tense tone of his usually calm friend's voice.

Beside him, Greywind growled low in his throat, scenting the wind. Robb felt the hair on his own arms stand up as three more direwolves added their teeth and disquiet to the courtyard. Seeing Keavan was breathless from running from the guesthouse and his face was pale with anger didn't make the feeling of foreboding lighten.

 

"What is it, man?" The Smalljon added. "Your father?"

 

"Your sister?" Theon added, leaving Robb to scowl at him for bringing up the lady in question in such a flippant way.

 

"There's been some kind of raid along the shoreline!" Keavan spat instead. "He found some signs that it might be brigands come up from the Riverlands with a ship, but that could just be to throw us off. The Ironborn get bold at summer's end, but so do other petty pirates."

 

"I resent the term _'petty'_ ." Theon objected and then held his hands up, palm out. "I'm not saying I approve, it's _my_ head if it's my people raiding, but after all these years to you think it is?"

 

"I care not if it was a crew of merry Septas taken by brain fever!" Keavan glared. "Three fishing villages have been razed. One was on our land, two were further north in the borderlands between Clan Wull and Clan Ash on the Bay of Ice."

 

"What do the survivors say?" Robb demanded.

 

"There were none."

 

All eyes turned on him and Robb breathed out. For a moment time seemed to stretch. Five minutes before his greatest concern was greeting his little brother and impressing his mother's favorite uncle. Now, instead, he found himself facing a threat to the North itself while he stood as Lord in his father's stead. It was as if, in that moment, he could hear the flap of a fly's wings or the scrape of Theon's eyelashes as he blinked next to him, trying to hide his own fear at the situation. Then he felt Greywind slip underneath his hand, and the texture of his direwolf's fur and his familiar presence snapped everything back into focus.

 

"Ser Rodrik!" Robb raised his voice and the man in question raced forward. "You heard Lord Keavan, I want you in my solar in a quarter hour with three of your most experienced men. Ser Brynden, mother, my friends, I want you to come with me _now_. Sansa, please see Bran settled back in and keep an eye on Rickon."

 

"I- should I start assembling food for another journey, Robb?"

 

"Yes," Robb was grateful that she'd thought of it, "Thank you, Sansa. Consult with the ladies in the kitchen as to how much and of what kind. I'll have the number of my party for you shortly."

 

Smalljon, Torrhen, and Keavan joined readily enough, but Theon lingered back for a moment.

 

"Theon?" Robb asked.

 

"You want me to come?" His surprise was obvious, and it hurt Robb a little even as some part of him understood.

 

"If you wish to remain, so there is no chance that you might have to fight your own-."

 

"If I'm invited, I'm _going_." Theon interrupted and Robb nodded.

 

Later he would try and reassure his friend that it couldn't be an Ironborn party. Balon wouldn't risk his son's life so needlessly. Theon would then, reluctantly, admit that he hadn't received a letter from his father in two years. It wouldn't matter either way. Less than a day after meeting his mother's uncle, the Young Wolf bid the Blackfish goodbye and thanked him for agreeing to stay and guard the keep and his younger siblings. Then, with a swift and heavily armed party at his back and his direwolf running at his side, Robb went to find out who had dared to attack his homeland while his lord father was away.

  



	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyarra gives Gwyn a talking to, Oberyn a happy ending, and Tyrion innocently helps his brother prove that Jaime Lannister cannot make good decisions all while Sansa Stark writes her grandpa a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a sex scene. It begins with *** and ends with *** if you wish to skip it.

**Chapter Twenty-Six - 297 A.C.**

 

Lyarra woke before her husband. That wasn't unusual as Oberyn would not shirk getting up if duty called him, but seemed to enjoy late nights and being abed until the morning was nearly gone. She'd also noticed her own distinct need to make use of the privy more than she'd had before and could only attribute it to the babe she carried. Lady Jynessa had laughingly told her it would only get worse, so Lyarra tried not to complain about it.

 

Oberyn was asleep sprawled on his back. He was taking up most of the bed. Lyarra had learned that the best way to sleep with her husband was simply to take up the space on top of him that he took up on the bed. Treading on a viper was a bad idea, but  _ sprawling _ overtop this one was fairly harmless if he invited you to do so.

 

Yawning against his shoulder, Lyarra began to gently nudge the arm that was wrapped around her back off so she could slip out of bed. Oberyn made a soft noise of protest in his sleep and drowsily groped her rump, but he didn't wake. Slipping out of the sheets she'd had draped over her own nude form and the light blanket draped over her husband, Lyarra found her dressing robe and went to take care of what needed taking care of.

 

She found Gwyn awake in the solar, slipping back in through the door carrying a covered plate of bread, cheese, and fruit. With her stomach feeling fairly stable, Lyarra told her friend not to bother with broth that morning and took a moment to get something in her stomach. Gwyn, dressed in a plain brown gown and apron in the usual layers of the servant class, had a white kerchief bound over her hair and eyebrows darkened to brown.

 

"You know you're not to go about without a guard." Lyarra admonished her. "Gwyn, you  _ had _ a guard, didn't you?"

 

"I did." Gwyn replied seriously. "I'm not going about alone in the lion's den, I promise."

 

Knowing Gwyn as she did, Lyarra could tell that her friend spoke truthfully. It wasn’t an easy task, but Lyarra had the luck of time to master it. Not bothering to ask who Gwyn had chosen as a guard in the early morning hours before the sun rose, Lyarra went on.

 

"It's still raining."

 

"Pouring." Gwyn agreed. "There'll be no tourney today. Though the King told your father that real warriors don't stop for mud, so I have a feeling they'll shift things around and do the melee when the rain stops and then the jousting after the field dries a bit more."

 

"Good, Ser Rodrik always said that half the men who broke their necks on the lists did it in the mud." Lyarra sighed and then nudged her shoulder against her friend as they both sat next to each other on the settee. For a moment, it was as if they were back in Winterfell. "Is Walda still abed?"

 

"She's sleeping in this morning. Did you know that she's never just slept in before? She always had chores."

 

"You never sleep in, Gywn."

 

"I can't, my brain's too loud. I can count the number of times you've slept in on one hand anyway, Princess.”

 

Lyarra snorted quitely and nudged the younger girl again, who nudged her back, and after a brief elbow war, Gwyn tried to excuse herself for work.

 

"You've got no work that should have you running around here, Gwyn, we're guests and my wardrobe and the other things you're responsible for, don't call for so much wandering the castle." Lyarra pointed out. "We've other servants who can handle food and such."

 

"Yes, but…" Gwyn sighed and Lyarra paused as she watched Ghost get up from where she'd been curled asleep in the corner to come over and lay her head across both of their laps. Gwyn idly scratched the wolf's white ruff while Lyarra petted her friend's velvety muzzle. "I'm looking into the ledger, Lyarra, and other things. Oberyn and Lord Gargalen have people looking for the old Master of Coin's people in the city, but there are other avenues to look through."

 

"Such as?"

 

"The Queen is stuffing the castle with people loyal to House Lannister, or at least from the area around Casterly Rock. Many of the lower servants were drawn from Lannisport and I know them."

 

"Is that a good thing?"

 

"For the King? Likely not. It makes them more willing to talk to  _ me _ , though, for they still think of me as one of their own."

 

That gave Lyarra pause to both worry and be curious about what Gwyn might have found out.

 

"But you  _ are _ safe while you're doing this, aren't you?"

 

"As safe as anyone ever can be in this place." Gwyn shuddered. "Queen Cersei is an infection. No-one's safe around her, and whether he knows it or not, even Lord Tywin's dancing to her tune right now."

 

"Lord Tywin seemed to be forcing her to dance to his at the tourney."

 

"Oh, he can still  _ intimidate _ her and make her behave like a proper queen in public, but have you looked at the position he's in? The Old Lion's staked everything on his daughter's womb. Her power is where it's always been, between her legs, and it's still strong enough to trap everyone she thinks she needs."

 

"Gwyn, that's crude."

 

"If your only value is your beauty and your breeding, it's also true."

 

Lyarra made a face, refusing to agree, but too honest to disagree outright. It made her slightly uncomfortable about the babe in her belly. It even made her slightly sad for the Queen. At the tourney, Lyarra had seen more bruises on her wrist. They were the broad purple prints of a large man's thumb and first two fingers. Given what Lyarra knew of the desperate need for a sane Heir to the Iron Throne she felt a little queasy thinking of how they'd got there, and the attention the King was paying her.

 

"What have you found out?" Lyarra asked Gwyn to distract herself, and because it was wise to know.

 

"Nothing about Littlefinger. Even if the man was horrid, I admire his work. He knew what he was doing when he chose toadies. They either had the sense to flee or the bad luck to die of the Plague around the time their master fell."

 

"Anything else?"

 

"Nothing I'm sure of yet, and I don't want to carry false tales."

 

"Then why don't you tell me what you  _ really _ meant by the song that the Queen threw wine in your face for, instead?"

 

Gwyn looked at her in surprise and Lyarra leaned forward, frowning.

 

"Gwyn, I _ know _ you. You wouldn't lie to me about anything, and I can trust you with my life, but sometimes you leave things out that you don't think I need to know. What are you leaving out?"

 

Gwyn shot her a look of complete confusion but Lyarra just sat back and waited. She'd found that a level gaze and patience was all it took. Gwyn could outlast, out trick, and out lie almost anyone, but if she truly loved you then she couldn't stand to have your disapproval for long. After about three minutes Gwyn sighed and nodded almost to herself.

 

"You have to promise me you won't do or say anything to anyone yet. This is very dangerous. It could get us all killed, Lyarra."

 

"It's  _ that _ bad?" Lyarra whispered back, feeling the hair on the back of her neck stand up as Ghost moved back, sitting at the point of a triangle in front of them and watching with red eyes altogether too smart for any normal animal. "Did the Queen - did she kill more the King's bastards?"

 

"I've no idea." Gwyn answered honestly. "But… I told you I would tell you about how House Parren was formed a long time ago. Let me sing you a song."

 

Quietly, and without her guitar, Gwyn sang the full song she'd started in front of the Queen. Her soft, plain voice was steady for once. Lyarra sat through it all, listening in fascination to the new tune. It was a pretty ballad. It was also historically important and accurate, once you dug through the flowery language. Not long after the Conquest, a Lord of the Rock had problems with the Ironborn. Orys Baratheon's third son, the black goat of the bunch, left the Stormlands after fighting with his elder brother overmuch.

 

He took ships and men to the Westerlands and won fame defeating the Ironborn. The Lord of the Rock granted him the holds of the extinct House Parren, as well as the right to take up their House Name, as a reward. He also gave the newly made lord the right to choose his House symbol, for which he chose a black lion, as he was himself of Baratheon coloring and had taken a Lannister wife.

 

"All of the Parrens since, have been dark of hair and blue of eye. The lightest our hair got was the same color yours is, Lyarra." Gwyn explained. "My own father's hair was coal black, and I have his eyes."

 

"Yes, but  _ your _ hair is blonde."

 

"It only took ten generations."

 

" _ Really _ ?" Lyarra hadn't known what to say to that.

 

"Yes, and to stay close to the Lords of the Rock, House Parren  _ always _ marries into some branch of House Lannister. I could write out my own family tree and show you. It's been nothing but Lannys, Lancetts, and Lannisport Lannisters since House Parren's modern founder left the Stormlands. Every generation a golden haired wife, and every generation a black-haired, blue-eyed child."

 

A terrible suspicion began to nibble at the edges of Lyarra's mind.

 

"Gwyn, you can't possibly be implying-."

 

"You've seen the Prince of Tongues-."

 

"I never should have read you or Oberyn, Robb's letter."

 

"You've seen the Queen's son. Does he look even a little like the King?"

 

"But you always said that the gold hair that Lann the Clever gave his children was like Brandon the Builder's long, narrow, face. All of Lann the Clever's children and their descendants are golden of hair. If it's a trait that always breeds true, why shouldn't it?"

 

"Because it always breeds true  _ except _ in House Parren." Gwyn argued. "House Parren shows that Argella Durrandon's coloring is stronger than Lann's. Look at Lord Renly and Lady Shireen. They don't look the slightest bit alike, but what do they share?"

"Black of hair, blue of eyes." Lyarra bit her lip, suddenly feeling ill.

 

"Moreover, while the golden hair breeds true in Lannisters, the green eyes don't." Gwyn went on confidently. "Everyone says there are gold flecks in Lord Tywin's green eyes, but you saw his eyes the same as I did; they're just a greeny-hazel. His mother's eyes were brown, and when you put Lannister Green together with brown eyes, you get hazel eyes in at least half the children."

 

"What happens if you have green eyes and blue?"

 

"What color are my eyes, Lyarra?"

 

Lyarra could barely breath.

 

"You're sure, you are really sure that the - the Crown Prince isn't the King's."

 

It wasn't a question. Lyarra felt dizzy and it wasn't the babe. It was the horrifying implications. If the Queen had cuckolded the King, that was treason. It wasn't just an embarrassment, she wouldn't be put aside. She and the Prince would go under the sword or the axe. Something Lyarra couldn't help thinking would be better than seeing Joffrey as king, but was still horrifying.

Her first instinct was to go to her father. The King had to be told immediately. Her second was like seeing a wagon's brake pulled when the horses were at full gallop.

 

She had been a diligent student of all that there was to learn while she was on her journey. She was intent on not shaming House Stark now that she was no longer thrust off to the side of their lineage. Just because she'd taken on the name and been swept away to Dorne didn't mean she wasn't truly a Stark now, and everything she did reflected on that.

 

Moreover, she was a princess, and the romance and satisfaction of holding such a title aside? It was an enormous responsibility. A day didn't go by when she didn't learn some new aspect or duty from Lady Jynessa or Lady Myria. One of those, perhaps the one she'd wrestled most with while watching Gwyn take to it like a fish to water, was politics itself. Lyarra didn't like and didn't enjoy the constant check and counter check of rumor, insinuation, and death that seemed to make up the moves of the Game of Thrones. She wasn't blind to it, either, and coming into King's Landing and finding a terrifying mess where a stable throne was supposed to be had only heightened her concerns over what she did know, didn't understand, and needed to be wary of.

 

"It will be war if anyone says anything, won't it?" Lyarra asked quietly and Gwyn's face was set in sad, grim lines.

 

"It will be war no matter what. I haven't found the proof yet, but I'm  _ sure _ that the Winter Fund's been drawn from. Just looking at how the kitchens are run - Lyarra, this is the most wasteful castle I've  _ ever _ been in. The money to run it has to come from somewhere, and the vaults at Casterly Rock are only metaphorically endless. If the Winter Fund's been touched, there will be war, and if there's war in the Westerlands, everyone else is going to get dragged down too. Lord Tywin's been the lynchpin holding the Seven Kingdoms together since before our fathers were born."

 

"How exactly is the Red Keep badly run?"

 

"Well, for one, there are about three times as many low servants on the books as the castle actually has."

 

"How can you know that?"

 

"I was in the kitchens during the sennight pay distribution. The paymaster had the household ledger out. The servants are all unlettered so why bother to hide it?"

 

Lyarra rubbed a hand over her face.

 

"Then there's the supply chain." Gwyn nodded towards the platter of food. "The larder's not watched well in the Red Keep. We get certain access since you and your husband are guests of the Crown and so the King provides for our meals somewhat, but it's fairly clear that the King is just generous to a fault. I mean, it's nice to see the servants here well-taken care of, or it would be if they were. Instead nobody's bothering to watch the mid-level servants. They are making off with a small fortune in food and other supplies which they then resell in the city at a staggering profit. Meanwhile, the drudges are as starved as most of the city is."

 

"Why isn't the Queen doing anything about this?"

 

"Either she can't be bothered to run the books because she's too busy socially in managing the court, or she's getting a cut of all of the graft and using it to help fund her own lifestyle and guards." Gwyn frowned. "I'm not sure which, but the Red Keep is hemorrhaging funds through mismanagement."

 

"I can't believe nobody's noticing that they're stealing food!"

 

Gwyn went quiet for a moment, obviously ordering her thoughts.

 

"Remember when I first came, how everyone in the kitchens thought I was a little awful?"

 

"You are a tyrant, Gwyn, eventually you just became  _ our _ tyrant." Lyarra rolled her eyes. "Everyone realized you just wanted to make sure everything was as it should be, and you work so hard that the staff had to love you for it. Trueborn noble ladies don't usually knead bread or do their own butchering."

 

Gwyn grinned back.

 

"I taught you the way of it, didn't I?"

 

"Yes, but I'm a…" Lyarra's voice trailed off as she recalled that she was a bastard no longer, at least not technically.

 

"Princess of Dorne." Gwyn raised her eyebrows and Lyarra turned the great ruby ring around on her finger and smiled.

 

"Aye."

 

"I think that Winter has changed the North." Gwyn went on after a moment. "Food theft is terrifically common in every other household I've ever heard of. At least, I mean, it's common if you're not careful to prevent it. Food and cloth are the two most common things stolen. I was never meant for a marriage and a keep of my own, you know. Lady Genna was training me to manage the Kitchens at the Rock, and one day be the Head Housekeeper. She talked fondly of seeing me married to the Head of the Rock's Guards or something similar. I was to be wed to a knight like my father."

 

Gwyn sounded… bitterly wistful, if such a mixture of emotions was possible.

 

"Would that have made you happy?"

 

"It would have made the child I was then happy, but I'm not her anymore."

 

Lyarra nodded slowly and rubbed a hand over her wrist in understanding.

 

"I would have been happy to marry Smalljon and to be Lady of Last Hearth before. It was all I could have hoped for and more."

 

"But now you're a princess."

 

"I don't feel I really am, yet. I haven't had to do anything a princess really must. Maybe I'll feel like I've earned the title when I've been in Sunspear a while." Lyarra mused and shook her head, her mind trying to avoid the topic was no excuse. "You're distracting me. We can't just stay silent, though, not if the Queen's an adultress. Gwyn, that's  _ treason _ !"

 

"Nor can we say anything without proof." Gwyn raised her eyebrows. "I'd be dismissed as bitter and an enemy of the Queen's family.  _ You'd _ be dismissed as trying to replace her. Something easy to imagine given the King's attention to you."

 

"I don't choose them, and I'm Marked."

 

"Ambition feeds stupidity, it doesn't starve it."

 

Lyarra made a face.

 

"Or they could just say Oberyn's trying to make trouble. Then the axe would fall on his neck. The King might wait until it was safe for you to kill him, but Gods alone know what would happen to him in between being sentenced and dying. There are worse things than death."

 

Lyarra shuddered at the thought. It should have been hard to believe. She was still afraid of what her husband's ultimate intentions towards the Crown and towards peace were, but to see him harmed? No, even had her word and her honor and her Gods not bound her to the man, Lyarra knew she'd have chosen him over the King in an instance. There was a difference between the appearance of honor and truly possessing it, she'd found. Oberyn was a fine example.

 

A thought occurred to Lyarra and she narrowed her eyes at Gwyn.

 

"Did you already tell Oberyn?"

 

The young blonde looked guilty.

 

" _ Gwyn… _ "

 

"...I wanted to tell someone who'd laugh in evil glee with me about the potential fall of House Lannister?"

 

Lyarra rubbed a hand over her face. Then she stood up. Taking Gwyn by the arm she led her to the dressing room.

 

"Help me dress to go out in the rain."

 

"Why, Lyarra, you're-."

 

"I'm pregnant, not made of spun sugar. I won't melt and it's not a cold rain."

 

"Where are we going?"

 

"The Godswood."

 

"...You're going to make me  _ promise _ you something, aren't you?"

 

"If you tell Oberyn something, I want to hear it."

 

"Lyarra."

 

"I'll promise not to share what you tell me until we both agree I should, but you're going to promise me on the Heart Tree that you won't trade information with my husband behind my back, is that clear?"

 

"But you won't say anything to anyone else of my suspicions about the Queen and her son?"

 

"No." Lyarra sighed, letting the painful twisting feeling that was her honor breaking its bones and taking on a new shape settle inside her chest. "It's my duty to keep my husband and your own awful self safe. I want to tell father, though. Eventually, at least, mayhaps just let him know it's a suspicion?"

 

"Mayhaps after we've all left?" Gwyn suggested. "Lord Stark included. You don't want him in the middle of this wretched place, do you?"

 

Lyarra waffled.

 

"We'll tell someone of your suspicions. Someone in the government." Lyarra allowed. "Maybe the Lord Commander or Lord Arryn. Someone who'll investigate and find proof, if it's there to be found."

 

"It will be." Gwyn said, her tone low and strangely solemn in a way more suited to Lyarra herself. "Someone always sees. The Gods have a strange way of putting eyes on important things."

 

"Yes…" Lyarra allowed and then stood up. "We've work to do, Gwyn, you might as well stand. I still want that promise. There's to be no more conspiring with my prince, is that clear?"

 

Gwyn caved, nodding and helping Lyarra dress with a shamefaced expression. Lyarra had to work hard not to embrace her friend and reassure her everything was fine. She'd do that after she got the promise, otherwise Gwyn would figure out some way to wriggle around it. Two years of working to get Gwyn to give up some of her more awful and destructive habits had taught Lyarra the importance of balancing love and care with firmness. If Gwyn had taught Lyarra that her honesty and goodness sometimes went too far and flew in the face of practicality, Lyarra had learned that Gwyn did not make good life choices when presented with an opportunity for vengeance. The stakes were currently a lot higher than the time she'd covered Robb's head with critters and he'd accidentally bloodied Bran's nose in his panic about the rain of spiders from the rafters.

* * *

 

***

 

Oberyn woke up to the exquisite feeling of his morning arousal being caressed by a small, warm hand. Years of experience with rotating bed partners kept him from moaning a name, confused by sleep, without checking first. Instead he just groaned wordlessly and thrust into the cup of the hand fondling him through the bedclothes. Cracking his eyes open, his current reality asserted itself and he moaned louder yet to properly communicate his appreciation.

 

"Darling, you grow bold. I quite like it."

 

"I was afraid you'd sleep all day, and then who would attend your wife?"

 

Oberyn grinned in delight as he looked up at the woman sitting above him. She wore a simple Northern dress in smoke-gray and her hair had been drawn back into a braid secured with plain white ribbon. A pair of delicate golden earrings shaped like seashells rested in her ears. Procured in Braavos, they were a gift from Lord Gargalen. That and her wedding ring were her only ornaments.

 

"You've been o-out in the rain." Oberyn protested when he reached up to touch her hair and found her curls damp, but his voice broke on the third word when her thumb brushed over him. The caress caused his foreskin to shift enticingly over his member and he closed his eyes to just enjoy it and thrust into her hand before going on. "Come here."

 

Lyarra complied with a tiny grin that managed to hold a great deal of smugness. Oberyn dragged her down into the bed with him, sitting up so he could properly kiss her. Getting his hands on her back he went for her gown's laces and was pleased to find them done up with a simple knot. It only took a few moments work to get the gown off, dispense with her smallclothes and the short stays that supported her breasts, but left her belly uncinched. Oberyn was all too happy to then drag her down into bed with him.

 

Nudging her beneath him he shared a long kiss with her, intentionally leaving her gasping before he dropped down to her chest and took one of her nipples into his mouth. They were still such a pretty feature. No longer quite as small as they'd been, the tips of her pert breasts were still as pink as the candy sold in stall at the port around Starfall.

 

She moaned prettily for him and he cupped both her breasts in his hands, gleefully noting their changing shape. His Uncle's jape about his appreciation of a woman's body as it swelled with child wasn't wrong. Knowing that he'd done this to the woman whose pleasure was pouring itself like oil on the fire of his need was a heady feeling. There was no other satisfaction like it. Oberyn felt the Gods were massively cruel for allotting some people no soulmates and forbidding others from having many at a time. What joy could have been had with a dozen such bonds feeding exquisite pleasure into one another?

 

"I'm not merely mocking the King when I say you've brought joy to my life." Oberyn pulled back from laving her nipples with his tongue to look into her flushed face. "You are a delight to me in every way."

 

"I love you."

 

The words hit him, unexpectedly. They rattled him like a hammer blow to the helm. He froze above her, halfway to seeking a kiss, and he stared into her face. Her eyes were wide open, as gentle a gray as a raincloud when the wells were parched and hope was lost. Her lips, plush and pink and parted for breath and to speak to him.

 

_ Gods _ , Oberyn thought _ , she's so young. _

 

Young and beautiful, and vulnerable. Oberyn rose on his elbows and knees and claimed his kiss. His passion was there, but softened by the painful heaviness abating in his chest. He missed Ellaria terribly in that moment, but was all too aware of how fragile what he'd just been offered was. Forever and always a fear of rejection hovered over the girl he was kissing, and he knew he had to handle her heart with care. Hovering over her with his body gently blanketing hers, he reveled in the feeling of her lower curls cushioning his member, her knee bent against his hip, and her breasts nudging his chest. Then he spoke.

 

"I did not expect to love you." Oberyn told her, pulling back from the kiss breathless himself, their tongues the last thing to part. He dropped a kiss against her eyes, his proximity forcing them to close and her lids silk under his lips. "I did not want you, in the beginning. You were not what I would have chosen."

 

He felt her breath catch and leaned down to kiss her cheeks, her lips, her forehead. He rained his lips down on her face like the patterning of a spring storm against glass. He tried to do something he'd never done before, and he reached for her through the strings of fate that tied them together, feeling his wrist seem to grow hot and cold at once and his chest tighten -  _ or was it her heart aching? _ \- as he went on.

 

"I love you nonetheless." He murmured back gently and pulled back to look into her beautiful, solemn face. "When I call you  _ darling _ I mean it, for you are dear to me, Lyarra. I did not choose your presence, but I choose to love you. I choose to be grateful. I did not ask the Gods to Mark me, but they Marked us well. You are not a shame or a burden. You are a gift. Anyone who cannot see that is heart-blind."

 

A moment later and Oberyn found himself being kissed breathless, pushed over onto his back while Lyarra reversed their places, a small noise the only indication of the force of her emotions as they hit him in a dizzying rush, like being swept away on a fast river. Oberyn gave over to her without protest as she took control of their embrace.

 

Oberyn felt no compunctions about this assertive pleasure she was demanding from him and groaned in loud, surprised appreciation as his wife pressed him into the mattress. It had been too long since he'd had a bed partner who wasn't afraid to take control. Lyarra put her hands upon his shoulders and devoured his mouth. He was still catching his breath when she pulled back, only to lift his voice again in delight as she did something for him he'd done for her, but she'd yet to gather the bravery to reciprocate.

 

"Please." He groaned in delight, coiling her braid around his wrist as he spread his legs further as her first, tentative, messy kiss against the tip of his swollen member sent lightening racing over his nerves.

 

"I'm not sure how." Her breath puffed enticingly across the skin of his belly and he met her eyes, hopeful and determined and a little shy over his own sprawled, recumbent form.

 

"I am  _ ever _ happy to teach you all that you desire, darling."

 

She smiled at him, low and slow and he felt no shame in letting out a noise of pure delight as she curled a hand around his base and gave his straining member an excruciatingly slow tug, dragging her hand up and down his shaft, shifting the retracted foreskin back over the head and then down again.

 

"I've  _ noticed _ , my Prince."

 

Oberyn shuddered as the way she wrapped her tongue around his title was a caress and an endearment at once. He would never hear her say it again without thinking of the sight of her sliding her lips in a circle down gently, cautiously over the head of his cock. He lost himself to the pleasure of her tongue, and of teaching her what he liked. She proved again that she was a fast learner and, if assured of her safety from prying eyes, fearless in her explorations. Her surprise when he pulled her up to kiss her without waiting for her to rinse her mouth was worth it, as was the long, slow kiss he enjoyed while softening against her belly as he insistently wrapped her in his arms.

 

"Now, I believe I have duties to attend to as well." He teased her as he dropped down, kissing her breasts and admiring the way her nipples were still the softest blushing pink he'd ever seen as he worked his way down her belly and scraped his beard over her thighs.

 

"The ladies of the North appreciate a  _ dutiful _ man."

 

"I've  _ noticed _ ."

 

She worked her hands into his short hair and, with only the previously present blush of pleasure on her face, pressed his nose and lips against her lower curls. He was only too happy to oblige. Soon he was pleased to hear her telling the thick walls of the castle precisely how much she enjoyed him, and it was only when he pulled back over her shivering form that he caught her eyes smugly. Watching the thin rim of gray around her blown pupils widen Oberyn lowered himself over her and rubbed his erection against her lower folds and dropped down for another kiss.

 

"Again?"

 

"You make me feel as young as you are, I believe." He teased as he arched his hips, sliding into bliss. "I intend to enjoy it, and you, to the  _ fullest _ extent."

***

 

* * *

 

Jon Arryn had to admit that, all else aside, at least Tywin Lannister knew what he was doing. Looking down at the sheaf of parchment on his desk detailing the cleanup of Joffrey's monstrous behavior, it was all proceeding apace. The Pentoshi merchant was on his way back to Pentos. He had been paid for his goods out of the Queen's purse, and she had made another considerable donation in recognition of her son's indefensible cruelty and overstep of his authority. The Crown had distributed funds others mutilated by Joffrey's hand.

 

Lord Tywin had also rearranged the Prince's guards. Before the Queen had been entirely in charge of choosing them. While the affair with Prince Viserys' body had served to at least slightly balance things in the royal family, it had also highlighted more problems. The prince should never have been able to disobey his father's instructions and get out of the Red Keep, and while the small riot was likely a loyalist cover, those killed by the Prince's men had added to his already foul reputation.

 

Still, Jon rubbed a hand over his face in thought, it could have been worse. With Tywin having put his own loyal men to escorting the Prince everywhere, and the Prince restricted to a very limited set of places he could be within the Red Keep itself when not at the Tourney, the damage Joffrey could do to the Crown was minimized. Tywin had also made it clear that he knew what Joffrey was, and would not tolerate another Mad King anymore than the rest of the kingdom. The plan was to see Joffrey married young while at Casterly Rock, as soon as after he hit three-and-ten, if the Queen did not conceive within the year and deliver a healthy babe thereafter. Then, once there was another alternative, the Prince of Tongues would go take the Black. At this point it didn't matter if the child was Robert's grandson or son, as long as there was an alternate Heir of Lord Tywin's line.

 

Jon hated to be so beholden to the man, but at the end of the day, it was Robert's fault. Jon knew that Robert blamed him for the marriage to Cersei, and he carried that blame honestly. He had known of Robert's whoring, but he'd assumed that a woman raised by Tywin Lannister would put her practicality above her pride. Gods alone knew that Tywin had done that to an almost martyred extent for how long as Aerys' Hand? Besides, Jon knew many noblewomen who did the same.

 

He'd had no idea he was choosing such a woman as Cersei Lannister. Then again, he'd never met a woman like Cersei Lannister. Oh, he'd seen them petty, grasping, prideful, and arrogant. He'd seen beauty curdle souls before. What Jon had never seen was Cersei Lannister's sense of invincible entitlement. It was almost akin to Aerys' belief that Targaryen's had some kind of magical value beyond other men. She honestly believed that she had some special right, or that life gave turns of some sort when it came to power. Since when had life been fair?

 

Jon shook off thoughts of the Queen as temporarily useless. He had other major concerns. His efforts to patch things up between Lord Renly and the King had stalled as soon as Robert had suggested that, if Renly was so concerned with Lady Shireen's future position as Lady of Storm's End, he should take her back there and give up his seat. In one fell stroke they'd lost their Master of Laws and a strong symbol of Baratheon unity and replaced it with the Queen's most powerful defender.

 

Jon wasn't accomplishing anything at his desk, however, and Lord Arryn shook off the malaise that the rain had settled into his joints along with the usual aches. Robert had sought the Queen's bed last night. Assuming the Gods were kind, there was no reason why a woman of one-and-thirty with a proven womb couldn't get with child again. Hopefully she would quicken soon.

 

He could have lived without having to tell Ned that Robert had followed his trip to his wife's chambers with four hours of sleep, a few obscenities about the rain ruining his festivities, and then a trip out to his favorite brothel. Ned shouldn't have looked surprised, but he always did. Still, it would give him a chance to speak to his other foster-son alone, given that Robert was occupied. With that in mind, Jon rose from his desk to go find the Lord of Winterfell.

 

Jon had given up on swaying Ned towards a betrothal with Joffrey. He didn't even blame him, though some kind of surface agreement with the understanding that Joffrey would take the Black ere a wedding ever occurred should have been possible. Had Robert not acted prematurely mayhaps an agreement with Shireen might have even been struck. Loras had only been knighted at fifteen because everyone believed he was on his deathbed with the Plague. Having a squire at only just sixteen would have pleased him to no end. Unfortunately Robert had blindsided his brother with it, and now the Lord of Storm's End could only see Shireen's marriage as a loss of the little family he'd built during the Plague, rather than as a way to gain more.

 

"Lord Arryn."

 

"Lord Tywin."

 

Jon turned and nodded towards the younger man as he paused in his journey down the corridors of the Red Keep. The good young knights of his guard stopped as well, and the red guards of the Lannister lord stepped back as well, drifting away as the two men met in the hallway. Jon had seen the flicker of surprise on one of the guard's faces, so he actually gave some credence to the potential that this was an accidental meeting in the hallway.

 

"I was just on my way to speak to my son about his progress in recreating the books." Lord Tywin nodded down a hallway to the side. "Would you care to join me?"

 

"I was actually on my way to speak to Lord Stark. However it is no formal meeting, and I can take the time to speak to you and Lord Tyrion if you wish."

 

Lord Tywin seemed to consider it for the barest second, and then shook his head.

 

"It is not urgent. Please, convey my greetings to Lord Stark instead. We can speak later on the matters we discussed last night."

 

Jon interpreted this comment as precisely what it was: an acknowledgement by both parties that securing the North in some manner was essential. The night before, after dining with Robert and Ned, he'd had speech with Tywin as well. On one hand, he was relieved. Tywin had taken the courts and the goldcloaks in hand and was actually purging and organizing them into something approaching efficiency. The problem was that the smallfolk were refusing to go to what they were now calling 'the Queen's Courts'.

 

Jon had no idea how it had happened, but somehow Queen Cersei bore the blame of the condition of the Crown's finances. The bulk of the debt actually rested in Robert's hands, Jon knew. His foster-son was generous to a fault, and refused to properly pursue taxes or curb public spending. The Queen's own lavish jewels, beautiful gowns, enormous household, and other such things were almost entirely paid for out of the Lannister family coffers.

 

The King's expenses went for beer, whores, and spectacles. The debt was built on bad ruling practices rather than simply a lavish lifestyle. None of that was something the commons understood. Instead the smallfolk heard whispers of debt and saw a golden queen parading her children's stone corpses, covered in gold leaf to hide the ugliness of the disease, being carried to their tombs on bejeweled litters. Amidst their suffering, strife, and starvation the smallfolk had latched onto someone to blame. Their scapegoat was a golden lioness, and everything attached to her was now tainted in the eyes of the peasantry of the Crownlands.

 

King's Landing was especially aggressive in their hate. So aggressive, in fact, that they'd turned their disdain on a man they'd seen as a source of fair, if harsh, treatment for all the years of King Scab's reign.

 

Grimly, Jon thought on Tywin's offer. The night before Tywin had, in a most careful and roundabout way, suggested that after the Queen had been safely delivered of a child she might feel more comfortable recovering in the castle of her birth. Jon had agreed that a holiday might do the Queen and King both some good, once the succession was more stable.

 

Underneath it all was the tacit agreement that Tywin wished to remove his daughter from the Crownlands to protect both his child and his investment in the Iron Throne itself. The city would calm substantially if the Queen was out of sight and out of mind, and the rest of the Crownlands would follow. Robert could go back to whoring and not having to think of his Queen, and hopefully Jon would have found a way to reduce spending and manage the debt. He had hopes that, if nothing else, Tyrion Lannister's bookkeeping would give him a platform from which to finally convince Robert that he had nobles all over Westeros cheating him. If he could get Robert angry he'd stop listening to fabricated sob stories and start insisting people pay their taxes, and then it would take perhaps three or four years to clear the Crown's debts, as long as the tax flow was restored.

 

Jon thanked the Gods that, even if the precious books that Littlefinger had been keeping had been destroyed, they still had all of the records from before then. Up to and including those from the last few years of Aerys' reign. That had given the King's Counter a way to project the tax revenues they should have been drawing, and begin working on a strategy of debt relief from there.

 

Eventually he found that that the Starks and Dornish were sharing a meal together in the guest solar attached to Prince Oberyn's suite. Jon debated with himself what to do. In the end he decided that seeing how Ned related privately to the Dornish was too valuable a thing to pass up. Robert cast a shadow over Ned, bringing to him smiles more readily than most, but also shading the reserved man. It made it hard to separate Ned's quieter opinions from what Robert thought because so much of Ned's manner appeared to be silent assent. Jon knew this was not so. Ned held strong beliefs and ironclad opinions from which he was not easily moved.

 

When the door opened and he was announced into the Prince's presence everyone had stood for the Hand of the King except for the Prince and his Princess. The reason for that was obvious, and enough to make Jon feel slightly guilty for the intrusion. It also explained why he'd been announced so quietly.

 

* * *

Ned didn't resent Jon's arrival at the impromptu meal that had stretched out far longer than it needed to. Jon Arryn was a second father to him. Ned did find it in him to regret the intrusion into what had become a very peaceful family moment however.

 

Before the King's Hand had been announced, the solar had been a place of great comfort, if not the sort Ned was much adapted to. The Dornish had pushed all of the furniture back against the walls. Cushions from the wheelhouse and scavenged from furniture were dragged onto the ground and placed into a long oval atop a few rugs. Rugs that had, in turn, been scattered over woven rush mats to further insulate them from the stone floor.

 

Trays were set out in the middle of the 'table' on a white cloth thick enough to save the rugs from any accidental stains. Ned had complained about the lack of tables and chairs. He'd pointed out that sitting upright aided digestion. In the end it had hardly done any good and Arya had enthusiastically pulled him down amidst the cushions the Dornish comfortably folded themselves down onto.

 

The food had been entirely too spicy. That said, there'd been a selection of fresh fruit Ned had been impressed with and pleased to indulge in. He'd watched in pleasure as his daughters had done the same, happily talking about this and that. Gwyn was there, and for once she was all genuine innocence. She'd found a book on Dornish cookery and she and Walda were shoulder to shoulder, listening attentively to Lady Jynessa as she expounded on the prices of spices in Sunspear and household management in general.

 

Lady Myria was much occupied in discussing knives with Arya, and Ned had found himself drawn into the same conversation. One where Lady Myria laughingly admitted that she'd make no warrior. What she was, however, was a lady of rank whose father hadn't believed in leaving his daughters vulnerable. She had her own set of throwing knives and knew how to use them well in case all other avenues of escape and safety were lost to her.

 

Ned had brought Ser Domeric with him, wanting to see him in close quarters with both of his daughters' direwolves. He'd learned to trust their assessment of people. To his pleasure Nymeria seemed to outright like him, permitting him to sit near her while Ned sat on Arya's other side. Domeric helped this along by slipping the gray she-wolf bits of meat he'd washed the spice off of in his glass of water. Ghost even condescended to snuffle at the Bolton Heir's outstretched hand, which was unusual for the reserved wolf to do with those she hadn't spent considerable time around.

 

Ser Domeric had shown the Northerner beneath his fine Southron manners, however, soon after the discussion of knives began. He'd happily sent his own body servant out to fetch a chunk of wood, and shortly afterward, Ned found himself joining Ser Domeric, the Red Viper, and Lady Myria in giving Arya her first indoor lesson with them. One that, being indoors, demanded more skill of her than Ser Daemon indulgently letting her toss them at trees while outside at the tourney grounds.

 

It had also been a pleasure to see that Ser Domeric was a better hand with a throwing knife than Prince Oberyn. The man was deadly with them, there was no doubt, and Ned was certainly proficient. Ser Domeric, however, proved with a grin that he could pick a knife out of the air and pin it to the wall with one of his own sharply honed blades.

 

Of course, that had led to the Bolton Words being offered. Then somehow Oberyn Martell had begun to lay out all of the knives on his own person. Something that had Lyarra laughing indulgently (Ned could have lived without hearing his daughter reflect that every time she undressed him she found inspiration for new places to hide her own knives) and Arya being endlessly enthused at the idea that Oberyn's long outer coat or formal robes weren't that much different in the capacity for hiding blades than a long skirt was.

 

Then there was Domeric Bolton. The boy was wearing a normal enough set of leather trousers tucked into high boots beneath a plain white linen shirt, a long pink velvet tunic with short sleeves, and a sleeveless black leather jerkin. It was perfectly normal court attire. Ned had no idea how he'd gotten that many knives into it.

 

"Have you ever skinned anyone with your knives?"

 

Ned had been about to rebuke Arya, when Domeric had spoken instead in a calm, measured voice.

 

"No, I have not. For one, flaying is against the laws of the North and the laws of the King, and as a Knight it is my duty to uphold justice." The young man had told Ned's wildest daughter. "It would have to be a foul crime indeed for me to call flaying just when I have a perfectly good sword and a block of wood handy to deal with things as the First Men should, don't you think?"

 

Ned had felt his esteem for the young man grow as he forced Arya to consider what she would do.

 

"I don't know why it matters what I think. Ladies don't get asked about things like that. Mother says so."

 

"You are going to Dorne, and I would be very surprised if Prince Oberyn doesn't put a sword in your hand one day. Everyone who holds a sword must ask themselves what they will do with it. When I became his squire, Lord Redfort told me that if someone can't answer that question, they shouldn't have a sword."

 

The conversation had then drifted to justice itself. Lord Gargalen had used it as a lesson and Ned had joined in readily, pleased for the opportunity before his daughters left him for the south and he had only letters to convey all of these things. He now had a desperate wish that he'd spent more time teaching them before Lyarra's Mark came. He'd never intended they leave so young, though…

 

It had been such a good meal. Arya listened and talked happily, minding her manners more than usual almost accidentally because she was content and confident in the company she was surrounded by. The Red Viper was too busy plying Lyarra with various treats to tempt her appetite, or discussing blades with Arya and others to harass Ned himself. Lyarra was so damned content that he watched his withdrawn, melancholy daughter curl up against her husband's chest as conversation drifted around her and slowly but surely fall asleep in the arms of the man the Gods had bound her to.

 

So Ned couldn't bring himself to resent Jon Arryn's arrival, but as he watched Jon's eyes take in the scene, he met them with a certain sadness. Lyarra was still asleep, deaf to the world thanks to the babe demanding so much of her energy. As such the Prince more lay than sat, reclined against a pile of pillows with his arms curled around his wife as Lyarra pillowed her head where his collarbone and shoulder met.

 

"You will, of course, forgive me for not rising." The Prince spoke quietly and Lyarra didn't even stir, her nose pressed against the chest that was bare under the man's long, Dornish coat.

"Of course, Your Grace." Jon replied in a voice equally quiet. "I am sorry to intrude. I only thought to speak to Lord Stark."

 

"Let's go to my solar, then." Ned offered his foster-father a small smile. "I don't turn my nose up at chairs."

 

"My knees thank you."

 

Ned led Jon out after all of the polite necessary things had been said, and spent a moment mourning the comfortable moment lost. He doubted he'd ever like Oberyn Martell. He damned well didn't trust his political motives. He was becoming comfortable with the idea of the Red Viper s Lyarra's husband, however. Seeing her happy relaxed something inside him, and knowing that the title she should have owned at birth had been given back by the Gods was something of a relief. He'd had to cheat her out of _ so much  _ to save her life…

 

A few minutes later they were comfortably ensconced in the over-decorated solar he'd been provided. Ned shared a broad footrest with his foster-father, as he'd once done in the Eyrie. There he'd often sat across from Lord Arryn, listening and learning from him of an evening. Robert would have been there as well, happily sprawled across a sofa once he got permission, listening and speaking occasionally while Ned was called on to poke his foster-brother now and then to keep him awake.

 

"Ned, since a marriage isn't possible between your family and the Crown, I feel it best to be blunt." Jon Arryn started, a small smile on his face. "You've told me time and again it's the preferred method of communication in the North, anyway."

 

"We're not a people for smalltalk." Ned grinned.

 

"Then just let me say it: Dorne is too powerful right now and they're no friends of Robert's. We need a way to balance the bond that the Gods brought between the North and Dorne or I'm afraid that they will see it as an invitation to act against Robert's rule. I am not talking about a threat or anything else that the Viper might come up with. I just want a counterbalance to keep Prince Doran's mind on the cost of war. He's a cautious man. Unless he's  _ assured _ of a victory compared to whatever his people's outlay of blood and grief is, Prince Doran will not waste their lives."

 

Ned winced, but nodded. It was almost a relief to hear it put that way.  _ Seven Hells, _ had Prince Joffrey not been a horror he'd have been tempted to agree to a betrothal. His little girl would have loved to be Queen.

 

Now, however, Ned couldn't imagine throwing Sansa into the Southron Court. Cat had never mentioned amidst all of her stories, the constant intrigue and downright dangerous plotting going on amongst the ladies. Sansa's dreamy nature would see her in some awful mess in Gods knew how little time. Far better to set her up with a good Northern marriage and see her safely settled and away from the grasping and power hungry.

 

Hopefully Roose Bolton's predictions of his own health would play out truthfully and Sansa wouldn't have a goodfather for long.

 

"What do you have in mind, Jon? I notice you haven't mentioned the Lady Shireen or Bran."

 

"Lord Renly's been turned against it by Robert's lack of tact and the Tyrells wanting to maintain their grip on his loyalty to their own causes through Ser Loras. Nothing short of a royal order will cause an engagement in that quarter to happen, and it would turn Renly against his brother even more firmly. I hope you're not insulted."

 

"No, I understand not wanting to give a daughter away, and I've made other plans in that quarter regardless."

 

"I imagine you do. The Princess looked content earlier."

 

"Lyarra's genuinely happy, and I thank the Gods for it. The Viper may sink his fangs into the rest of us, but he's been a good husband to her. She's delighted to know she'll soon be a mother."

 

Jon seemed both relieved and a little stressed by that. The skin around his blue eyes tightened while his shoulders relaxed. Then he sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.

 

"I would not wish any girl into a marriage not of her choice or her inclination. Lysa taught me what fools we are when we don't take our daughters' wishes into account. I think it's equally irresponsible to just leave them to their ways and their wills, of course, the way that Prince Oberyn does with his bastard girls, but there must be true agreement involved and untainted by threats. If there is not everyone is miserable."

 

Ned couldn't have been more uncomfortable if he tried. How could he deal with Jon mentioning his goodsister? Lysa Arryn's death, the scandal with Petyr Baelish, and the knowledge that everyone knew still rankled deeply. Ned was waiting with his temper snarling just beneath his skin for someone to mention the rumors that Cat had given her maidenhead to the man. That was a scurrilous  _ lie _ , and if it was brought on by fever, Ned didn't care. Had Baelish been alive, Ned would have finished what his elder brother started.

 

"As to what I have in mind?" Jon went on. "Marriage is best, but fostering is also useful. You said last night at dinner that you want to take on more fosterlings. Ser Brynden can live anywhere happily as long as he has his armor and something useful to do. While Renly's got a good advisor in Ser Davos and is doing better at ruling, he's still young, Ser Loras is younger yet, and they both could not possibly get more solid guidance than Ser Brynden."

 

Ned sighed and stroked his beard in thought. On one hand, he didn't want to see his son go. He'd just managed to draw Bran back North and arrange for part of his squiring to happen in Winterfell. Then there was the fact that Lord Hoster expected Bran and his brother to come back and spend time in Riverrun as well.

 

On the other hand, Jon was entirely right. Robert's rule was weak. The Crown was in trouble. Ned felt it his duty as a vassal to help his King and his duty as a friend to help Robert himself. He'd originally intended to give Bran up for fostering in the Vale.

 

"Aye, it could be done, but perhaps not until next year." Ned replied slowly. "I've given my word he'll spent time with his grandfather, Lord Hoster, and I already have plans in place for my wife and Sansa to travel south to visit Riverrun."

 

"Even announcing it now would be useful." Jon relaxed. "Ned, you could approach Lord Renly yourself…?"

 

"As a gesture of respect for his household." Ned agreed, nodding. "Aye, that's proper."

 

"Lord Tywin's also offered to foster your youngest son at Casterly Rock in a few years, if you so choose."

 

"I'd sooner send  _ all _ my children to Dorne." Ned answered and then wished he hadn't at Jon's frankly appalled expression. "You've met Lady Gwyn Parren, from Lyarra's household."

 

"Yes, and Lord Varys conveniently happened upon me in the hallway to discuss her past." Jon Arryn said, and his next words startled Ned deeply. "It was part of a discussion I had about other ways Dorne might be placated."

 

"Jon?"

 

"Lord Tywin's agreed to nothing yet."

 

"But?"

 

" _ However _ ," Jon Arryn gratefully accepted the tankard of dark Northern ale that Ned passed as they sat opposite each other and spoke. "Lord Tywin is no fool. If the choice is between peace and war, or even delaying some inevitable conflict between his House and another until his own House stands in a better position, he will always take the more logical choice."

 

Ned was shocked silent. He'd attempted to make Robert see the light in bringing the Mountain and Amory Lorch to justice, and hopefully some of the worst of their companions as well. He had failed utterly to move his best friend. Now his foster-father was suggesting that Tywin Lannister was closer to doing the right thing than Robert. If he was doing it for expedient reasons that changed not the outcome, though it lessened the honor of it.

 

"Lord Tywin is going to turn over Lorch and Clegane?"

 

"No. He refuses to lose face around his bannermen, or allow it to be implied that he thinks his own conduct less than perfectly honorable. He has agreed to look the other way as long as whatever happens to them happens off of his lands. Will you pass that along? There will be no strife between House Lannister and Dorne over the deaths of those wretches as long as they find they meet the Stranger outside the Westerlands' borders."

 

"The Mountain seldom leaves Clegane Keep."

 

"According to Lord Tywin, he'll  _ motivate _ the man to go make his presence known at whatever tourney off his lands is thrown first. Gregor Clegane chose to miss this tourney, but he likely won't want to miss the next. That should give your daughter time to birth her babe and, hopefully, loosen their bonds enough that she shouldn't die if the Mountain kills her soulmate."

 

Ned went silent at that, glowering at the idea, but had nothing to say. What  _ could _ he say? That the Mountain should have lost his head and his life years before? He'd already said that enough to little effect. Eddard Stark had fallen into a dark humor, staring silently into his tankard of ale when his foster father spoke again.

 

"Ned."

 

"Yes, Jon?"

 

"I am an old man, and should Robert offer you this post when I die, I do not want you to take it."

 

"What?"

 

Ned stared. Actually, he was fairly sure he  _ gaped _ . Had some crawling bug on the floor walked into his mouth he wouldn't be surprised, for surely his jaw was resting there already. That was the last thing he expected to ever hear Jon Arryn say. How many times had Jon stressed that brothers in arms were brothers forever, and it was always one brother's duty to protect another?

 

"To be the Hand of the King is to constantly have to sacrifice your honor on the altar of compromise for the sake of peace, Ned." The old man shook his head slowly. "Not only are you unsuited for it, I don't want to see you forced into it. Willas Tyrell's a likely young man. Tyrion Lannister is showing some promise, and there are others. Even Tywin Lannister may have a few more years left in him than I have, and the shipwreck that the marriage alliance has turned into has no bearing on his skills as Hand, which are a proven thing."

 

"True enough." Ned was utterly shocked. "Are truly asking me to refuse him?"

 

"This is a poor place for an honorable man to live."

 

Jon rubbed a hand over his face, and for a second the vitality that had kept him going for so long seemed to ebb away. Where the Hand of the King had been setting a moment before, now sat a tired old man. Ned felt his heart catch as suddenly he had the terrible feeling that this would be the last he'ld see the man who'd spent more time raising him than his own father alive.

 

"If that is what you wish of me, Jon, you have my word." Ned agreed. "Who will help Robert?"

 

"Robert shall have to help himself. If he is wise enough to restate his brother as his Master of Laws he can elevate Lord Tywin or Willas Tyrell. I would prefer the latter, but he might refuse to leave Highgarden. The Tyrells have buckled down on stabilizing their rule at home and have shown less interest in matters of the throne than they have in my lifetime. I'm less than amused to be sad for getting what I spent years wishing would happen."

 

"I used to wish Lyarra would get a soulmark so I could see my daughter become a Stark." Ned winced. "The old cliche about showing caution with your wishes is more right than I want to admit."

 

"Who would you have had her bound to?" Jon asked curiously, the exhaustion ebbing away from his face. "You were in talks to betroth her to Lord Umber's son, weren't you? I am surprised his Heir would accept a bastard."

 

"The Umbers are a rougher sort of people, but they're good-hearted and honorable." Ned shrugged. "A Stark in blood was enough for the Greatjon. The man is my friend, and I felt Lyarra would be wasted without her own household. In truth… I do not know what I was hoping for. It was just an idle hope. I did not give it much thought beyond that I could give her the name she so wanted and so deserved."

 

"Well, she's now a princess and you say her husband pleases her. I would say the Gods were kind."

 

"Even in their punishments, the Old Gods have been good to me."

 

Ned didn't agree with the idea of kindness. If anything, he credited Lyarra's happiness with how easy his daughter was to love. Lyanna's only child brought happiness with her wherever she went, quiet and mournful though she sometimes seemed. In his mind it was the Viper who had gotten more than he deserved.

 

* * *

"Give 'er a year or two and she'll be as good looking as any whore you've ever had." Bronn's advice was cheerfully given. "If nothin' else, it's not a bad deal. Yer' Lord Father ain't gonna' offer yer inheritance up like ye' want, but if he names yer' babe Heir you can run things for 'em when the old man's no more."

 

"As always, Bronn, your advice is as useful as it is well-spoken."

 

Tyrion Lannister stared down into his mostly empty wine goblet. On one hand, he found the entire experience of speaking to his father painful on most occasions. On the other? Tyrion usually had so little hope where his family was concerned that he could wrap himself in a cocoon of sarcasm and wine. From inside he could watch the proceedings of the latest collapse inside House Lannister with something like nihilistic amusement.

 

Now he found he couldn't. His father hadn't offered him what he wanted. He didn't have the acknowledgement he craved. What he did have was a path where he could one day see through to being the Lord of the Rock in effect if not in name.

 

The path, however… Tyrion had given up hope on being wed. He'd tried it once before and it had come to nothing but grief. His father's attempts to get him a noble wife just ended in humiliation for all involved. Far better to simply soak himself in wine and whores and enjoy what little freedom and challenge life gave him.

 

Now, however, he had a chance for more. All he had to do, Tyrion thought, was the impossible. He had to get a young lady whose only reasons to wed him would be monetary and status-involved to overlook the reasons she wouldn't want to marry him. Reasons that included her own youth, Tyrion's stunted ugliness, the fact that Tyrion's family had directly contributed to - or at least failed to prevent - terrible things from happening in her life, and the fact that she already had a very nice position in a princely household far away and in safety where she needn't have anything to do with any Lannister, least of all the malformed imp of the family.

 

"She didn't seem to hate ye' at the fancy thing you went to last night with the Rose Lords."

 

"No, but she didn't seem to  _ like _ me, either. While fearful caution isn't the  _ worst _ reaction I've received from a lady for having requested a dance, Bronn, it is not the one a man hopes for either when wooing a maiden."

 

"Wouldn't know, haven't much use for maidens." The sellsword shrugged. "Why anyone'd try and bed a girl who doesn't know how to bed a man I don't know. Seems strange to me. I mean, I can see why you'd want if you had a castle an' all to pass on, but it's too much trouble to my mind. I mean, any idiot can wait out a woman's courses to wed her. What's the state of her maidenhead have to do with it?"

 

"It's largely a matter of tradition."

 

Tyrion offered idly as they both walked down the Red Keep's corridors. It was beginning to appear as if the hardest part of wooing Lady Gwyn Parren was going to be finding her. Plying his suit in front of the Red Viper was out of the question. Ignoring the risk of poison or being maimed, he had no desire to get into a contest of mockery with the man in front of a lady. It might be a damned fine game of wits, but he doubted it would serve to make him look good in a lady's biased eyes. His was not a form he could compare to that of Oberyn Martell and hope for a favorable answer.

 

If she wasn't with the Prince, she was likely with the Princess. Unless duty separated them, Oberyn and his young soulmate stayed close. So while Tyrion was all too happy to stake out the small library and hope that the ladies showed up again, it was also a strategy doomed to failure simply because it didn't present him time or any privacy. He knew he would look most favorable when not surrounded by others to diminish him.

 

So that meant catching the lady-in-waiting when she was moving about on her duties. Bronn slid effortlessly into and out of the castle servants. As such, he'd learned that Lady Gwyn was wont to do the same thing, though she was seldom caught at it. With her bright hair covered, her head down, and layers of plain clothing she vanished easily into the vast kitchens of the keep, or down into the laundry.

 

While it tickled Tyrion's fancy to spring himself on her while she was about spying, he also thought better of it. She didn't go about without a guard. She was often around the heavy Frey girl. Plus, he didn't imagine she would forgive him easily for disrupting whatever sneaking about she was doing. It might even frighten her, and Tyrion knew that not frightening her was key.

 

"What I truly dislike, Bronn, is that I believe the lady might have been fond of me, once." Tyrion mused. "When she came to Casterly Rock as a child she was… friendly. Excited for her future and sweetly girlish, as the fosterlings often are when they're elevated into a Great House's care. She didn't shy away from me, though, as most of them did."

 

"If her father was in the Guard at Lannisport, that's no surprise." Bronn offered and Tyrion raised an eyebrow for an explanation. "Guard work is  _ rough _ work in a city. You get brawls, you gotta' deal with hired footpads answerin' to crooked merchants. More guards 'an not end up missing noses an' eyes or with faces messed up from having torches shoved into 'em. The Lady'd have grown up with folks uglier than her calling her father friend, even if he did have a 'ser' in front of his name."

 

Tyrion considered that for a long moment.

 

"You have an extraordinary talent, Bronn, for making a man feel both  _ better _ and  _ worse _ about himself in the same moment."

 

"It's a gift."

 

Tyrion huffed and handed the man his goblet. Bronn had a wineskin thrown over his shoulder. It was an almost adequate supply to sustain them as they went on their journey. If attempting to catch her when she was somewhere amidst the servants wouldn't do, he knew he'd likely have to catch her when she was with the Princess. Looking out one window at the endless sheets of rain falling down he pulled a face at the fact that seeking out Princess Lyarra's company meant he'd likely have to face off against the Red Viper again as well.

 

The man himself didn't bother Tyrion so much. He frightened him slightly, as anyone wise would be frightened of a profoundly dangerous man who wished you and your whole family dead for understandable reasons. He was not a bore, however, nor was he rude or stupid. The man was educated, well-read, and witty. Under any other circumstances - or rather, carrying any other name but Lannister - Tyrion fancied he would have enjoyed conversing with the man.

 

As it was, Prince Oberyn had made it very clear that Tyrion was not wanted around any maiden in the Princess' household. He'd been polite about it, in a sideways fashion. In fact, Tyrion had rather cruelly enjoyed the pain that came with his father's withering stare when he'd dutifully reported the fact that Oberyn's disdain for him wasn't because he was a half-man, but because he was Tywin Lannister's son.

 

Still… a chance to rule the Rock with his father's death wasn't to be let go. Not even if it was rule by proxy. Tyrion didn't look forward to it, he felt hurt by it, and was intellectually scared as fuck over what it meant, but he knew that his father wasn't going to live to be Jon Arryn's age. Plans should be made for who would inherit Casterly Rock and the Westerlands, and it was his by right, was it not? He wasn't Lord Tywin's oldest son, but Jaime had given up his inheritance not once, but twice to stay in the Kingsguard and fuck Cersei.

 

Not that Lord Tywin knew about  _ that _ , or would accept it if he did. Tyrion was firmly convinced that Tywin could walk in on the twins fucking on a tabletop and convince himself that he saw nothing. Or maybe that it was a pair of conveniently blond servants. Whatever it took not to admit that the daughter he'd evelated to queen and his previous firstborn were what had shattered every plan that he'd ever made.

 

_ Shattered plans _ … Speaking of such things, there was Joffrey to consider as well. Tyrion, for once, was praying that Jaime got his sister with child quickly. His mad nephew had been left too much to his own devices during the Plague and afterward. Cersei had wallowed in her grief for Myrcella and Tommen, ignoring him save to praise her eldest. Robert had always ignored his children by Cersei, and the Plague changed little. With that gap in observation the little terror had become unmanageable enough to threaten the throne itself. Tyrion thought back on his father's words from that morning with great relief.

 

_ "Your nephew will take the Black as soon as your sister delivers a healthy child by the King."  _ Tywin had stated with the iron law of the Gods in his voice.  _ "I am not some Essosi cur to condone kinslaying, but the realm cannot bear the weight of another Mad King. I will have my most trusted men escort him North as soon as Cersei's child has seen its first moon." _

 

That was probably the best news the government could have gotten in years. If, of course, they'd shared it with the rest of the Small Council. At this point, only Jon Arryn, the King, Lord Stark, Lord Tywin, and now Tyrion himself knew of the plan. He would have been more pleased at his inclusion if it hadn't come with the usual element of insult.

 

_ "With your brother's foolish choices being what they are, I require an Heir of you. I have discovered the corruption of the steward who Gregor Clegane intimidated into leaving me uninformed of the situation in regards to Lady Gwyn and her family and lying to your Uncle, Ser Kevan, about my knowledge of the matter. With the steward dealt with, our family still owes the young lady a debt for our mismanagement of her fostering and our distant blood ties." _

 

Lannisters always pay their debts, of course, Tyrion thought to himself. In this case it fell to him to do so. He would wed the Lady Gwynn at his father's bidding, produce a child, and if there was no promise in making him Heir, Tyrion knew that he was no more stupid than his brother was ugly. His father was a wise man and knew what his health was like. He couldn't even ride a horse a quarter mile in the weight of full armor.

 

Tywin Lannister was working to get his House in order. A thought that gave Tyrion a tiny thread of hope that he could prove himself enough to earn the inheritance and acknowledgement that any other son would have simply been given. It also terrified him.

 

Tyrion was not a fool, and he didn't miss many subtle things paraded in front of his nose. He certainly wasn't blind to the obvious. Right now the only three things holding Westeros together as one kingdom were Jon Arryn's patience and the respect that the other kingdom's held the falcon lord in, Robert's largely defunct reputation for being unbeatable on the battlefield, and the fear everyone held of Lord Tywin Lannister. If any of these faltered, things were going to get very ugly, very fast. Stability was a needful thing, and right now House Lannister needed direct male heirs to be stable. Tyrion was his father's only source for that, and it gave him a sense of power he'd never had before.

 

Finally, his father  _ needed _ him.

 

"We going back up to your bolt hole?"

 

"No, Bronn, I doubt they'll go up to the library." Tyrion shook himself free of his thoughts and paused, mid-step, looking out the window again. "... Actually, I'm a fool."

 

"Library, then?"

 

"No, no,  _ no _ ." Tyrion shook his head. "If they wish a book, they'll likely send for it. Prince Oberyn will be used to doing so, even if the Princess likely lacked the clout within Winterfell to ever remove a book to her private quarters, given her previous bastard status. What else do we know about the Princess and the Viper?"

 

"They're likely fuckin' like rabbits."

 

"Well, yes, but the Lady Gwyn is hardly going to be in the vicinity if they're in the process of doing that."

 

"It's the Red Viper."

 

"He's Marked."

 

"Oh, right. Damned pity, the man knew his way around a whorehouse, I heard."

 

"Indeed, we discussed them last night, actually. It seems some of the better brothels have been open since he last came to King's Landing when I was yet a boy…" Tyrion shook off the momentary distraction. "No, what I mean is, the man is  _ active _ . He has seen forty years and yet he's still feared on the lists and the field. He spends no less than two hours in the practice yard, daily. He's not become like the King, who knows no battle that doesn't involve a napkin and a platter of roast game, and the Princess is used to being a bastard daughter of the North, where uselessness is next to a death sentence."

 

"So if you coop 'em up all day they get bored." Bronn snorted. "Still say they'll be fuckin' like rabbits, then."

 

"Well, not  _ all _ day." Tyrion felt his lips turn up. "The prince  _ has _ seen forty years."

 

Bronn snorted in amusement at that sally. Tyrion just smirked and turned onto a new path. If they weren't in the library, Tyrion was sure he knew where they would be. Princess Lyarra was fascinated by history and, purportedly, was not ignorant of swordsmanship. The Red Viper was a famed warrior. There was only one obvious place where they'd go if they wanted to move and be inside at the same time on a dreary day such as this. He proved himself right when he stepped out into the Black Gallery.

 

Named so because of the black marble pillars holding it aloft and the slatted black lacquered wooden shutters that served as doors along one long side in foul weather, the gallery had never been one of Tyrion's favorite places in the Red Keep. It was a broad room with a fairly low ceiling that existed in an odd place. Stuck on a second floor when it was surrounded by two stories on all sides because those rooms had higher ceilings, it was near the guest quarters, but you had to twist down a side corridor and a set of oddly shaped stairs to reach it.

 

The black shutters along one wall were usually left open to the weather from the small, cramped, and often forgotten courtyard it abutted. Today, however, they'd been drawn shut. It was necessary to protect the contents of the room.

 

Tyrion was beginning to learn the full scope of the King's passion for collecting weapons. While he wouldn't touch a blade that wasn't the jeweled knife that Lord Arryn had given him in his youth, Robert Baratheon was willing to spend tens of thousands of gold stags to collect unique or historic weaponry. Most ended up in the expansive amory, but less important pieces occupied other spaces within the Red Keep.

 

Gifts of weaponry either given by someone the King didn't like or of a sort that Lord Robert didn't care for ended up in the black gallery. With its dark, low ceiling, the room showed off the weaponry poorly, but that hardly mattered when the King would never venture down that way to admire them. Instead suits of gaudy, but useless armor sat on stands. Plinths or chipped pedestals taken from other parts of the Keep  _ (usually Targaryen leftovers damaged in the Sack)  _ supported weapons either embarrassingly jewel-encrusted or simply poorly made. The collection did have a few gems, however, in the sense of quality.

 

"I cannot believe a sword this fine is being left to rust in a rotting scabbard!" Princess Lyarra's voice was one of great personal offense and tragedy. "It's a  _ beautiful _ weapon!"

 

"Yes, but it was a gift from Lord Velaryon. See the inscription?" The Prince's voice reponsonded. 

 

"This is a terrible room for weaponry; the open wall is so damp."

 

"The shutters keep the rain out, but do nothing for the humidity." Lord Gargalen's urbane voice added its own disapproval.

 

"I cannot believe that nobody has stripped any of the jewels from any of these things, or the gold wire or the gilding." A light female voice offered in a tone of frank practicality. "I'd say the whole lot could fetch a couple hundred gold dragons, maybe even a few if you played your cards right."

 

"Gwyn!"

 

" _ Lyarra _ , stop fussing over the poor abandoned weapons and look. There isn't even any wire peeled off the back of this gaudy suit of plate from Lys!"

 

"The Lady Gwyn has a point." Lord Gargalen chuckled.

 

"I think something was pried off the back of this helm." A high-pitched, bubbly voice offered.

 

"No, it's been hit and caved in… Likely with a chain whip with a weighted end. Unusual weapon, common around Qarth."

 

Bronn shot Tyrion a look and Tyrion smirked and walked into the gallery through one of the four doors that opened into it. He quickly saw the Dornish group wandering around. The most dangerous member of the party was standing next to his wife with her pale fingers idly wound through his as they examined a sword hanging from a pillar. It was, if memory served him right, a symbolic gift showing fealty that King Robert had demanded from House Velaryon after they had knelt during the Rebellion.

 

Lady Walda stood by the Lord of Salt Shore. The elderly man leaned heavily on his cane, likely feeling aches and pains due to his age and the foul weather. Five guards, three of them knights of no small renown, were scattered here and there in the shadows cast by the candle branch held in Prince Oberyn's hand. Lady Walda and Lady Gwyn each had a single candle of their own to hold.

 

Lady Gwyn was currently peering at everything, wandering around with her candle raised as she peered at the gaudier of the weaponry scattered around the room. Tyrion took a moment to really look at the girl while sober. Given his expectations for rejection and mockery at the Tyrell party, he'd not been in the best state to admire her then. Now, he wished to make an honest assessment of the girl his family had wronged, but who might make quite a bit in his life right if all played out according to plan.

 

She was still in a slightly awkward point in her youth. A bit of baby fat clung to her face, hiding some of the fine angles and planes of her facial features. In a year or two, however, Tyrion knew it would melt away and she'd be stunningly beautiful. He'd grown up with Cersei, after all, and there was a strong resemblance between the Parren girl and his sister.

 

Where Cersei wore her Lannister features with haughty pride, however, Gwyn Parren wore hers with a kind of friendly caution. He was fairly sure the friendliness was fake. If not a mask, it was likely something like what Jaime often wore in terms of expression and manner. Jaime himself was not a kind man, but he did enjoy a jape and company that didn't harass him. That wasn't an indication of fondness, but good humor was nothing to underestimate in a wife.

 

There was also a kindness in her blue eyes. It wasn't given freely, but it was present. The storm blue eyes warmed to sunlit skies when she laughed at something the Lady Lyarra had said, and her rosebud mouth blossomed when she graced Lady Walda with a smile. Tyrion had been without kindness much of his life, save for what Jaime could show him, and he knew he wanted it in a wife. Mayhaps he should ask the newly created Martell Princess how she'd earned it; she was Stark enough to answer him honestly if she chose to answer.

 

As for her form? Tyrion had never favored young bed partners. At least he hadn't since he was young himself and too foolish to recognize a whore when Jaime bought him one. Lady Gwyn was obviously young, but she was blossoming into a slender figure with soft, womanly curves. Again, in a year or two, she'd be the sort of woman men lusted over desperately. For now, she was merely pretty and youthful. A bar of gold sitting on a smith's bench, waiting for the artistry of a goldsmith's hand, as it were.

 

The Dornish guards saw them, of course, though not immediately given the dim light. All stiffened, and one cleared his throat. All heads in the room turned to face them and Tyrion repressed a slight shiver at the way some of their eyes reacted to the candlelight. Lord Gargalen and Prince Oberyn's black eyes glittered like dragonglass; black and reptilian. The Princess' gray eyes flashed over in a silvery-violet hue that seemed more like what an animals should do than a person's. Worse, however, was the sudden glint of red and the realization that Tyrion was less than two yards away from one occupant of the room he had  _ not _ noticed.

 

"Fucking hells!"

 

Bronn, as usual, expressed himself well as he took several quick steps back and clapped a hand on his sword's hilt when he caught sight of the mastiff-sized white direwolf lurking silently behind a suit of mostly copper barding on a crooked stand.

 

"Hello, Your Grace." Tyrion bowed to Prince Oberyn.

 

"Princess." He bowed to the once-bastard.

 

"Lord Gargalen, ladies." He merely nodded, as he was not of insignificant rank himself. "Lovely day for a walk through the dark with a wolf, isn't it?"

 

"I find it so, though it seems that your companion would not agree, Lord Tyrion." The Red Viper smiled, sharply with a flash of fang and malice as he slid his arm around his wife's waist and the white wolf continued its fixed and unfathomable stare.

 

"Had a run in with the other one of 'em two days ago." Bronn snorted. "Can't believe the things aren't even half-grown. Worse than a goddamned shadowcat, if you ask me."

 

"I'll take the wolf's company." Tyrion replied dryly. "Thank you."

 

"You killed the thing, didn't you?"

 

Tyrion snorted and resisted the urge to scratch his chest. The claw marks that crossed his front from shoulder to hip were uglier than the whip mark that scored his face. Unlike the whip mark, the claw marks had festered. There were more marks upon his back, some across the upper part of his left arm, and bite marks around his left ankle. The ill-fitting set of a child's boiled leathers he'd been offered were all that had saved him. Well, that and his axe.

 

The Lady of the Eyrie had gone as mad as King Aerys, if not quite as cruel. Once Bronn had won his freedom, he'd been allowed to leave, but before then she'd allowed her jailer to put him directly into a 'trial by combat' with a captured, half-starved shadowcat. It was only after he'd won it that Lady Lysa had claimed to know nothing of it, and that such contests had to be between men. Fortunately, by that time Bronn had been dragged into the Eyrie as well, and they'd struck upon a bargain. Two for the price of one, as it was, where their freedom went.

 

" _ You _ killed a shadowcat?"

 

"You've seen Nymeria?"

 

Lady Gwyn's comment overlapped with the Princess', and Tyrion watched the blonde girl politely bow to the other girl, who remembered her rank only after a moment and smoothed the worried expression that had crossed her face. The Prince, meanwhile, looked gleeful.

 

"If so, this is a story I  _ must _ hear." The Red Viper smirked. "I trust you ran into the gray lady of our party with the Lady Arya?"

 

"I wasn't present at the time, so I am afraid I cannot tell you." Tyrion turned and Bronn shrugged, as usual, intimidated by nothing.

 

Rank meant little to the sellsword, besides what gathering some might bring in the way of improvement to his life. As such, Bronn tended to be painfully blunt. It was rather refreshing.

 

"Nymeria didn't cause any trouble, did she?" The Princess asked in concern.

 

"Nah, just gave me a fright." Bronn shrugged and offered the pretty young princess a smirk and shook his head. "Came around a corner and suddenly there were a whole shit-ton of teeth right at ball-level. Enough to make a man nervous, if ye' take my meanin'."

 

Prince Oberyn looked amused by that comment. His wife looked torn between amused and a little chagrined. Lady Gwyn merely looked… politely blank as she stood off to the side. Tyrion noted with something like irritation that the white wolf had moved to stand between her and the rest of the room. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up when the beast fixed a strangely knowing red stare on him, and so he looked away.

 

"She was with yer' sister, though, and Lord Stark." Bronn went on. "Didn't cause no trouble. I bowed an' left, as I usually do unless paid to do otherwise."

 

"A wise decision." Prince Oberyn agreed, as he turned to Tyrion. "Lord Tyrion, I had heard of your unfortunate trouble with the bandits. Such a  _ shame _ for the King's Counter to lose the very books he was meant to be auditing."

 

"Yes." Tyrion winced and resisted the urge to relieve Bronn of the wineskin and take a swing of it. "I-."

 

The sound of fast, booted steps approaching them caused Tyrion to pause in his address and his plans to find some way to address the Lady Gwyn himself. He frowned more in surprise than unhappiness when he saw the door opposite him open to reveal his brother. Jaime was, as usual, incredibly impressive and handsome in his white cloak and gleaming pale armor.

 

"Tyrion? I heard your - Oh."

 

The Kingslayer looked at Prince Oberyn, nonplussed. The Red Viper stared back at Ser Jaime of the Kingsguard with undisguised hostility. Everyone else just kind of stood there in the cloud of tension that was descending. Well, save for Jaime, he ignored it. Either that, or he was simply oblivious; Tyrion was never quite sure with his brother.

 

"Your Graces, Lord Gargalen, ladies." Jaime's bow was graceful but uncaring as he fixed his attention. "Tyrion, I need to talk to you."

 

"Immediately?"

 

" _ Now _ , yes."

 

"Because my presence is  _ essential _ ." Tyrion let his annoyance start to color his tone.

 

"Yes, that would be why I am looking for you." Jaime replied, his tone growing irritated.

 

"Of course, my company is ever in such high demand." Tyrion all but groaned and offered the best possible smile he could, given his dubious charms and his half-formed but still thwarted plans. "You'll forgive me, of course, but it appears that family duty calls."

 

"And nothing comes before a Lannister to another Lannister." The Red Viper's eyes were cold and his tone mocking. "Yes, we're familiar with that reality. I wish you and your brother all of the success you can imagine I would, at whatever your venture might be."

 

They were no sooner out the door than Jaime started to speak, his tone irritated.

 

"I've been looking for you for the better part of an hour. Why were you not in your office? You're never anywhere else, these days."

 

Tyrion had followed Jaime out, but waited until they were well out of the Dornish party's earshot before speaking.

 

"Did Father tell you why I am not to be found in my office?"

 

"He said he's set you to wed the Parren girl, but why should that take long? She's a third class knight's daughter and you're father's only available son. You're the best offer she's going to get."

 

"While I'm warmed by your confidence, need I remind you the  _ endless _ list of ladies who've decided I'm not worth the reward you so glowingly describe?"

 

"That's different. They were lords' daughters."

 

Tyrion wasn't about to admit that it was that very difference that gave him hope. Bronn had made it clear that he wouldn't care if he had to marry a dimwit covered in fur and drooling into her plate if she would bring him a castle. Surely somewhere beneath all of Lady Gwyn Parren's unfortunate experiences was the same driving ambition every female Lannister of Lannisport held dearest to their heart: the hope to be Lady of Casterly Rock. Their lesser relatives had been throwing their daughters back up the family tree for centuries, after all.

 

"Yes, but this knight's daughter has the ear of a Dornish Princess."

 

"Which doesn't change her own prospects much. Really, Tyrion, you're ugly but you're smarter than I'll ever be and you're charming. The girl will see clear to it, just pry her away from the Viper and his she-wolf and be yourself." Tyrion was touched by Jaime's honest affection and faith. "You'll not fail… That's not what I wanted to speak to you of, though."

 

"Then speak, I'm listening."

 

"I need you to get Lord Arryn to distract the King and Father."

 

"No."

 

"Tyrion."

 

"No," Tyrion shook his head.

 

"You haven't even-."

 

" _ No _ !" Tyrion glared up at him, wishing that he hadn't dismissed Bronn. It might have stopped Jaime from wagging his tongue off about whatever idiocy he was suggestion. "Jaime, it's enough that I know. I am not going to be a party to arranging anything."

 

"I'm not asking for you to set up a  _ tryst _ !" Jaime growled, speaking in the same half-sentences that they always used and always had once Jaime had realized that his brother knew the truth of the twins' unfortunate and unnatural relationship. "I need to get a midwife in to see Cersei. The lout left her  _ bleeding _ last night. He…"

 

Jaime actually stopped then, turning and resting both fisted hands against the wall. Tyrion felt a sudden hint of real pain for his sister, weak as it was. It didn't matter that, politically, his sister and their family desperately needed her to just submit and bear a child. For a moment all he could hear were Tysha's sobs and screams…

 

He shook the past off, hating himself and it with equal passion. He anchored himself by reaching for his brother instead. Jaime was there for him, whenever he could be. He would do the same for his brother.

 

"Breathe deeply. One Kingslaying is enough for a lifetime, yes?"

 

"Some days I wonder…" Jaime choked out and then shook his head. "Cersei cannot see a Maester and Pycelle will run to father. If he thinks there's something wrong with her and she can't bear another child…"

 

Tyrion nodded grimly. Even his father would, at that point, become desperate. Uncle Kevan had a daughter. House Lannister was a large and sprawling House, though it was more inclined to sons. If all else failed and Joffrey was that insane their father might become desperate enough to offer up another bride to the crown and help put Cersei aside. It was very unlikely, but at the moment Tywin was wroth with Cersei for for many reasons.

 

"Jaime, what do you need me to do?" Tyrion asked after a moment and Jaime relaxed somewhat.

 

"The King's been at a brothel all day. He's not likely to visit Cersei, but he might notice me bringing someone into the royal quarters. Jon Arryn and Father are the same. Just get them away for maybe an hour so I can bring someone in."

 

Tyrion breathed out, his mind whirring as he wondered how to accomplish that. It fell backwards, thinking of the Dornish party, and then jumping along lines of alliance.

 

"If the King is back from the brothels, he'll seek his foster-brother. Lord Stark is already speaking to Jon Arryn. I will go to find the Hand of the King and strike up a conversation on how the economy of the realm can be improved by cultivated trade in the North. I will suggest the King be summoned and Father as well. If Lord Stark is there, the King will come, and it is the kind of talk Father would not miss anyway."

 

"Tyrion, you're a  _ genius _ ."

 

" _ Someone _ had to get the brains in the family." Tyrion's lips turned up at the unabashed compliment. "You got all the looks."

 

"True." Jaime shot him a smug grin and turned, moving quickly to accomplish his goal as Tyrion huffed out a breath and headed off as fast as he could without unseemly running to accomplish his tasks and offer the only sibling who'd ever loved him help.

 

Had he known that Ser Jaime was sneaking in a midwife to cleanse the Queen of an unwanted pregnancy under the guise of her arriving moon's blood, Tyrion would have been far less cooperative. Had he known that it wasn't the first lie his brother had told him involving the love of a woman… well, things would have been far different in general. As it was, a figure robed in exotic silks stood in a small alcove, listening with sharp ears before walking down a side corridor. A quick tap on the shoulder directed at a young drudge responsible for some of the castle's chamber pots assured that Ser Jaime had acquired a shadow and Lord Varys yet more valuable information.

 

* * *

Lady Sansa Stark was  _ torn _ . On one hand she was overcome by worry for her brother, Robb. He'd ridden out with his new boon companions and Theon because someone was raiding their coastal villages.

 

As the acting Warden of the North in their father's place and as Heir to Winterfell, Sansa knew this was only proper. It didn't stop her from worrying for him. It also left her more than a little sad, for stern, handsome Lord Forrester was now gone, as was the sad but sweet Smalljon, and tall and well-built Torrhen Karstark. All of whom had paid her compliments, admired her newly acquired household management skills, and been greatly attentive to the lone daughter nearing marriageable age left to their Lord Paramount. Missing their attention was almost as bad as worrying about her brother and Theon.

 

Then there was the matter of her  _ letters _ . On one hand, the letters from her family in King's Landing filled her with joy. They spoke not only of their own health, but of such exciting and wonderful things!

 

Sansa was going to be an aunt! How could she even define how lovely that was? She'd always wanted to be a great lady one day and a mother and a wife. She could only lament being trapped in the North while Arya got to go to Sunspear. She vowed to write her youngest sister a great deal of advice on how to properly care for Lyarra once she'd gleaned it from their mother and Old Nan. She was already appalled at how badly her sister was doing at it, seeing as Lyarra was getting sick and swooning. Had Sansa been there, she was sure she could have found a better solution!

 

Sansa sighed, knowing she wouldn't be able to concentrate, and began to put up the letters that lay scattered around her bed. Rickon was currently curled up on the sheepskin rug in front of her fire, mostly on top of where Shaggydog and Lady had curled up together. He was all but lost in where the silver and black fur of the two direwolves was mingled, but she could make out a pale little hand and a mop of auburn curls.

 

Lyarra had sent her drawings of the latest fashions from the capital and Sansa was hell bent on making her own wardrobe more fashionable. She wouldn't emulate the Queen entirely, however, because she wasn't one to forgive a slight to her family. If the Queen was going to be rude to her sister when Lyarra was trueborn and wed by the Gods themselves to a right and proper prince, Sansa owed her no compliments. Instead she'd just steal a little bit here and there to make Northern fashions a little smarter, as it were. Dornish fashion intrigued her greatly, but Sansa knew her mother wouldn't allow it and the weather forbade it anyway. Mayhaps she could nudge down a neckline or two… Gwyn got away with it.

 

Sansa suppressed a wave of childish jealousy. Gwyn wasn't here anymore so there was no point in being mad that Lyarra's friend wouldn't be her friend. Gwyn usually wasn't mean to her anyway, she just always acted like she didn't have the time for Sansa, or she knew something that Sansa didn't. That had annoyed her mostly because Sansa knew it was likely the truth! She'd wanted to learn from Gwyn, who'd been fostered in a major keep, but Gwyn wouldn't teach her  _ anything _ ! She just treated her like she was foolish and didn't help at all, and Sansa resented it.

 

Still, Sansa would have taken even Gwyn's company at the moment. With Jeyne Poole sent away to White Harbor to be betrothed because her father had found those letters she wrote herself to fake having a suitor, Sansa had no company her own age. That allowed her to learn much from her mother and she'd certainly been getting a lot done, but it didn't help with being bored. It also made everything lonelier.

 

Robb coming back had helped. Bran arriving had helped more. Neither could replace having a female friend her own age to talk to, though, or Lyarra's calm and tolerant advice. Sansa was realizing only too late how her sister had been patience itself with her. She'd never even acted resentful when Sansa began to turn away from her and call Lyarra her half-sister. That must have hurt. To be so kind even then… Sansa was realizing that, maybe, her mother's teachings about the Seven giving rewards and such might have hit on something that her mother didn't believe.

 

Sansa felt ashamed to admit it to herself, but she knew deep down that she wasn't the kindest of her Lord Father's daughters. Lyarra had always owned that title. Sure, she hid it behind swordsmanship and running about with Robb, but her sister had a grace about her that Sansa sometimes felt she was only faking. Like a little girl putting on a wedding with her dolls.

 

"Sansa?"

 

Relief washed through her as the difficult thoughts raced away. They were pushed back by a tide of something Sansa hadn't expected: affection for her difficult and wild littlest brother. Of all the things to help her in her loneliness, Rickon had been the best.

 

"Yes, Lil'red?" Sansa used Lyarra's nickname for the toddling boy as she walked over and helped her brother flail his way out from between the wolves, lifting him with a grunt into her arms.

 

Rickon's little wrist was still splinted. He would be better soon, but given how active he was, the layers of soft linen, stiffened canvas, and a wrapping of peeled twigs was deemed a good precaution against over-use by Maester Luwin for a few days yet. Just looking at it made her wish Septa Mordane was there so she could hit her again. The feel of her closed fist impacting the woman's face had been savagely satisfying, and it was only shock at her own behavior that had left her the wits to keep Lady from tearing into the septa with her teeth.

 

Sansa halfway regretted her restraint sometimes.

 

" _ Letters _ ."

 

"What about the letters, Rickon, use your words."

 

Her brother whined at her, but eventually complied.

 

"Read me."

 

"Alright." Sansa grinned against his hair and moved over to get where the slightly crumpled parchment of Rickon's last letter from their father sat.

 

Sitting down on her recently cleared bed she curled up around her brother and read him their father's words again. It didn't take much thought, for she all but had it memorized. Each day he seemed to pick a different letter to carry about, be it their father's, Lyarra's, or Arya's. The last, at least, was becoming rather fun to read. Arya's letters were going from reasonably legible to rather beautiful. Sansa was sure that was largely in thanks to the fact that Prince Oberyn apparently used  _ calligraphy _ as punishment.

 

As she read, however, Sansa couldn't help thinking with unease on her own letters. Lyarra had written only of how embarrassing she had found the royal family. Lyarra wrote of a drunken, fat King who was nothing like Robert Baratheon had been in their father's stories. Sansa was left uncomfortable and upset to think of how unchivalrous and wrong it was for a King to look at any wed woman, or any woman but his Queen, the way that Lyarra described him looking at her.

 

Then there was the Queen. She described Queen Cersei as looking like everything a queen should be. She was golden, she was incredibly beautiful, but according to Lyarra she was also cold and insulting to those around her. She was irresponsible and didn't manage the royal household well, and was apparently adding to the royal debt that had caused the King to ask their father for a loan. One that was being paid back, and that was good, but it still was upsetting to hear about that. Kings and Queens were supposed to be rich and responsible… and nothing in Lyarra's letters made Sansa think their King and Queen were. Given her own recent lessons in household management, that made things in the capitol even more disturbing to think on. Sansa vowed to ask her mother for more political lessons. She wanted everything in her letters explained.

 

Most especially, however, Sansa wanted an explanation for _Prince_ _Joffrey_. She simply hadn't been brave enough to ask her mother for another such explanation after her first inquiry had been met with the statement that, 'you needn't concern yourself with any man but that which your father chooses for you, and I am sure he will not look towards Prince Joffrey'. Her father's letter hadn't mentioned the prince at all, though Sansa had asked after him in three separate letters of her own.

 

Lyarra's letter had been different. She'd written of the prince, but described the Heir to the throne in terms that were not at all what she was expecting. Sansa had already seen what a prince could be like in the man that Lyarra had married. 

 

Prince Oberyn was so smart. He'd even forged links in a Maester's chain! And he was handsome, but in a dangerous and exotic way like a Pirate King from one of the songs Sansa's mother didn't like at all. He sparred for hours and sometimes with more than one opponent at once! He was friendly and kind with children and those he liked, and he didn't tolerate the company of those he didn't. His presence demanded respect and met disdain with cutting mockery that left Sansa intrigued in strange ways.

 

Prince Joffrey was tall with golden blonde curls and bright green eyes. Sansa had liked reading that. She'd liked less reading that he wore layers of silk that made him look more like the Queen than a knight. Men should, well, look like men. It was okay for them to be handsome; Sansa preferred it. That didn't mean they should be effeminate. Reading that Lyarra had almost mistaken the Crown Prince for a princess the first time she'd seen him was not attractive. 

 

Sansa didn't necessarily want to wed a man as dour as her father could be to those who didn't know him, but she did want a man who her father could respect. After all, how could she respect her husband if her father didn't? Even as much as he disliked Prince Oberyn, it was clear her father respected his intelligence and his fighting prowess.

 

Then there was Arya. Their father had crossed out some of Arya's letter. Sansa's attempt to use a needle to scrape the dark ink off the top of the lighter ink had failed, so she didn't know what her father had hidden. She was sure it was about the Prince, though, because Arya had been agreeing that she thought Prince Joffrey looked like a girl: perfumed, powdered, and curled. Surely there'd been something  _ else _ about the man Sansa had once whispered hopefully about wedding with Jeyne and even her mother?

 

A knock sounding on her door nearly made her jump out of her skin. Shaggy got up from his place by the fire, and Lady stretched and did the same. Going over to the door, she opened it, and found herself grinning at the figure that waited for her.

 

"Hello Lady Niece." Ser Brynden Tully's seamed smile greeted her from beneath his fall of iron gray hair and the blue eyes they shared.

 

"Hello Uncle Blackfish." Sansa dropped into a dainty curtsey as Rickon ran out and wrapped his arms around one of the famous knight's legs.

 

Bran had started calling Ser Brynden 'Ser Blackfish' at some point since he had become his squire. Their Great-Uncle had encouraged it and Rickon had picked up and changed it. Their mother's one, brief attempt to prevent the name from sticking amongst her children had been shot down by the knight himself. The Blackfish was quite happy being 'Uncle Blackfish' and would remain Uncle Brynden to his brother's daughter alone. With her children, he liked the new moniker just fine.

 

"It's time for  _ this _ wild little one to go to bed. Your mother sent me to collect him and remind you that you were to join us for cakes in her solar since she feels you're old enough to join our evening talks of the castle's business and other such things."

 

"Yes, Uncle."

 

Sansa dutifully helped collect Rickon's things from where the toys and such had crept into her room. Once they were back in the nursery she asked after Bran. She found he was going about some of his duties as their great-uncle's squire, and felt very grown up for a minute to be invited into her mother's talks with the famed knight. It was a feeling that quickly passed, as as they walked towards her mother's solar, her companion noted her serious expression and asked after it.

 

"Something happened in King's Landing, I'm sure of it." Sansa confessed. "I was asking about Prince Joffrey, and then when they finally meet him my father won't write me about him _at_ _all_ , Lyarra just wrote to make it clear she didn't like him, and part of Arya's letter was edited by father! I don't like that they're hiding things from me."

 

"They likely feel they're protecting you."

 

"I wish they  _ wouldn't _ ." Sansa fretted. "It would have made me feel safe once, but now I just worry about what I don't know. Think about the weirwood trees, and those horrid lies about mother and that Baelish man! I mean, even if everything else was true, the things he said about mother weren't."

 

"True enough." The Blackfish rumbled.

 

"If we'd known about that sooner, mother wouldn't have been so embarrassed. As it is, people were talking behind her back for a long time." Sansa went on. "I don't want to feel stupid like that again, or trapped. Sometimes, when you don't know things, you make mistakes you can avoid. I don't want to do that with something as  _ important _ as what's going on in the Red Keep. That could affect everyone in the Seven Kingdoms!"

 

The was a long pause and Sansa came to an abrupt halt, looking back to realize she'd walked slightly past where her great-uncle had come to an abrupt halt. He was smiling down at her in a small, proud way that made her chest tighten. She missed her father rather terribly then. She idly petted Lady's head and the fur of her ruff as her direwolf leaned against her legs.

 

"Your mother's right that you're growing up, but you're getting to it faster than she thinks." The Blackfish observed, then nodded once to himself. "I tell you what, Lady Niece, if you want to ask such questions, may I make a suggestion?"

 

"Of course, Uncle Blackfish."

 

"I suggest you write your  _ grandfather _ a nice, fat scroll and tie it to a raven's leg tonight."

 

"You don't think Lord Hoster would mind answering a question like that from his granddaughter? It wouldn't be…  _ impertinent _ for a girl to ask?"

 

"I can't think of  _ anything _ that would make him happier."

 

Sansa let out a breath, torn between suspicion and relief as she bit her lip.

 

"Would Mother be angry?"

 

"Your grandfather will write her in such a way that she'll be proud, I'm sure."

 

Relieved and newly determined, that was just what she did. When Hoster Tully got the raven he was lying in bed, his gut aching fiercely but not debilitatingly, and it was a welcome distraction. He anticipated the brainless pleasantness of reading a sweet letter from the granddaughter most like his dear Cat. When, instead, he got a clumsy but insightful letter asking for political advice and giving him information on the goings-on in the Red Keep from a Martell Princess he had no plans of writing he almost forgot his pain. Instead he called for his Maester, a lap desk, a quill and some parchment. After he'd summoned as servant to bring him his private correspondence from the capital as proper reference material he settled in to enjoy giving a lesson to his granddaughter in the real workings of governance.

 

For a moment, he forgot he was an old man. With his mind's eye picturing Cat as a girl of two-and ten, instead he became young again. Hale and healthy, Hoster Tully wrote Sansa Stark a detailed letter three scrolls long that required his stoutest raven to carry properly. It was the longest letter Sansa Stark had ever received in her life up to that point, and it treated her with respect and an assumption of intelligence that she was not used to being treated with. To say she enjoyed it wasn't quite accurate, but it shined light on a part of her mind that, neglected, had failed to germinate before. As she wrote her response a little green tendril climbed towards the light and fate shifted like sands in an hourglass as the future rewrote itself yet again for House Stark.

  
  
  



	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day at the fair, a melee, and two of Lann the Clevers descendants having an honest conversation while skulking about a darkened hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a sex scene and it is marked with *** and *** at the beginning and end in case you'd like to skip it. :)

**Chapter Twenty-Seven - 297 A.C.**

***

 

"The bath water is cold again." Lyarra complained as she lowered herself into the linen-lined tub and shot her husband a martyred look.

 

"The water is  _ warm _ , not scalding and I've said before that it is bad for the babe to take baths that are very hot." Her husband refused to be moved by her look as he came over and lowered himself into the bath beside her, reaching for her immediately. "If you are cold, your husband is all too happy to assist you in the matter."

 

"My husband's feet are like ice as soon as the sun drops below the horizon, so I do not know how he thinks to be of help before it's risen again."

 

"Then come warm your husband up, darling. It's like you've got an internal furnace."

 

Lyarra scooted away from him in the tub just to be contrary, but it wasn't as if she could really flee from him in it. Worse, she realized that she'd unintentionally started a game that he obviously enjoyed. Oberyn was all too happy to scoot after her, then drag her against him. She consented to the kiss, but tried to resist when he began to tug her onto his lap. It was a failed attempt and soon she was straddling him, his manhood pressed against her belly as he bent nearly double to kiss her breasts.

 

"You're not fighting in the melee, are you?"

 

"You wish to speak of such matters  _ now _ ?"

 

Lyarra sighed and drew him up, pressing a kiss against the strong bridge of his nose, then over each of his eyes as the lids slid closed. He drew her down to tangle their tongues together until both were gasping and she curled against his chest, nuzzling his neck when they finished. With his hands wandering freely she took the time to slide her own down and fondle him, earning a groan and smiling at the way his face twisted in pleasure when he thrust into the circle of her fingers.

 

"I'm worried for you. I spoke to Lord Gargalen-."

 

"My uncle worries too much. He should not share such-."

 

"It's no burden to fret for those I care about. It's my duty as a Stark, just look at my father."

 

"As much as I would not normally mind discussing another man during this activity, let's never mention Ned Stark again while you're hands are where they currently are, yes? We agreed I would not mention your brother, Robb, did we not?"

 

"Deal." Lyarra agreed, grinning and pulled a face at the idea at the same time, then drawing him in for another kiss, happy to let him massage her back and suddenly feeling playful. "Mayhaps we'll discuss Aurane Waters?"

 

Shock played over Oberyn's face, then a bright grin.

 

"I could be amenable to some discussion of the captain, sadly I would suggest we start after we've made love _at_ _least_ once, in case our Marks decide to act against us."

 

Familiar with the sick feeling that could come over her if she even passingly admired another man, Lyarra nodded. It was one thing to jape, but she didn't entirely want to ruin the mood. A few minutes were lost pleasurably to further caresses, and then Lyarra went on.

 

"I'm not worried you won't hold your own, Oberyn, I'm worried about your enemies using it to attack you as a group."

 

"As is mine uncle."

 

"As is Ser Arron, Ser Daemon, and Ser Deziel." Lyarra added, earning a glare and shaking her head. " _ Oberyn- _ ."

 

He let out a deep breath and shifted, moving her off his lap and panting a bit as he moved her hand aside. Pressing a quick kiss to her lips, he drew her out of the water. Startled, Lyarra followed him. As she stood, drying him off with a towel and trading silent kisses and caresses, she couldn't help thinking of how far she'd come from the frightened maiden she'd been on their wedding night. Once they were both dry, Oberyn tucked them back into bed, surprising her further.

 

"I want to make love properly."

 

"And your back hurts." Lyarra added and Oberyn made a noise of irritable agreement.

 

The night before he'd decided to make love to her against the wall. It was an experience that Lyarra hoped to repeat, but without her husband losing his footing slightly on an unsecured rug and wrenching his back. A backrub and hot compress had done wonders for it, but she knew it was still bothering him.

 

"Yes, another reason not to join the melee, I am sure you would point out." Her husband said irritably, then brushed it aside with a kiss, scraping his beard over her jaw on his way down to suck the blood to the surface of her neck despite her efforts to push him off. "I would have you marked everywhere to remind the Usurper’s wandering eyes that you are not his to covet. As to the melee? I had only planned to fight in order to face Lorch all the quicker. As yet I've had no word that he will show. If the child killer hides in the Westerlands, coward that he is, I cannot fight him there, can I?"

 

"No." Lyarra agreed, feeling relieved and ashamed of it.

 

Princess Rhaenys deserved her justice, but Lyarra couldn't find it in herself to want to risk her own babe for it, or Oberyn's life.

 

"If it were just you fighting him I would not worry so."

 

"I will settle it when I may." Her husband's desire had flagged a bit, pushed aside by anger and old hate, but he let out a breath and pressed against her again. "I will not take part in the melee without a reason, Lyarra. Now, let us not speak of this anymore. You're doing me a disservice, Wife, and I maintain it's your duty to correct it…"

 

"Starks do love their duties." Lyarra murmured into a kiss, sliding her hand down again and earning a happy sigh, then a groan from her husband as she began to coax him back to full hardness. "What would you have of me, my love?"

 

He shuddered in her arms and wrapped her more firmly in his, dragging their bodies close with her hand trapped between them as he kissed her deeply. Lyarra panted as he drew back, then drew forward to leave her own marks on his neck. If she used her teeth a little more than he did, well, every noise he made seemed to indicate his approval.

 

Lyarra found herself grinning broadly as her husband laid back against the pillows, dragging her up to straddle him again. His smile in return was all that was lazy, smug, and sensuous. Biting her lip she threw her head back, feeling the heavy knot she'd pulled her curls into in order to keep it out of the bathwater shifting against the back of her neck as she lined him up against her entrance. Likewise, she moaned as his hand slid down, his fingers massaging over her lower lips before diving inside to caress them both and then back out to seek and then caress the center of her pleasure.

 

"I would have you  _ ride _ , Lady Lyarra." Oberyn groaned. "For you've a talent for it."

 

"As you wish, my Prince."

 

Her husband let out a strangled, high pitched moan and then a string of curses as she slid down upon him as slowly as possible, clenching her interior muscles as she went. Lyarra rocked forward against his hand slightly, enjoying his own attentions as she finally settled deeply into the cradle of his lips, taking him inside her completely. What followed was not in any way gentle, and in short order it wasn't slow, either. It was in all ways wonderful, however, and that was what mattered.

 

In the end their lovemaking left them both so heated that Lyarra was grateful for the cool bath to sink into afterward. Oberyn napped on the bed, having fallen asleep after his peak. Lyarra felt no need to tease him for it, as the night before had been another plagued by putrid dreams. She was beginning to resent every day spent in King's Landing, even as she felt her heart break a little at the idea of being parted from her father and truly leaving her family behind, save Arya. Her future was in Dorne, however, and she found herself eager to get to it.

 

Once she was clean, she rose from the tub and dried off. Checking the height of the rising sun by cracking the door to look out of the bedchamber and towards the solar windows, Lyarra decided that Oberyn could get an hour's solid sleep before she had to wake him to take his own quick bath. Sinking into one of the folding chairs form their tent that had been moved to their guest chamber, Lyarra sat beside her sleeping husband and pulled the candlebranch closer to her on their side table. Picking up the carving project she'd started some days ago, she went to work on it and waited in her dressing gown until it was time to really begin the day again.

 

She couldn't help feeling relieved, however, that he wasn't going to participate in the melee. She'd written to Maester Luwin after she'd discovered she was pregnant, and he'd finally finished his research on soulmates and written back. While he'd confirmed what Oberyn had said about it taking a  _ very _ serious injury to one soulmate to cause another to miscarry, Lyarra couldn't help fretting. Not only would it mean her husband was harmed badly, but Lyarra felt protective of the life she carried. She'd always wanted to be a mother, as she'd never had anyone of her own, and Oberyn's recklessness worried her.

 

She knew she was unlikely to talk him out of participating in the joust the next day, but the melee concerned her more. She'd seen her husband fight and knew how capable he was, but it was one thing for a man to face off against a single man while on horseback. The melee wouldn't even be a fight like at the Twins, where they were outnumbered but largely better armed. It would be utter chaos, like a real battlefield, where nothing could be guaranteed. If, at the tourney, swords were supposed to be somewhat blunted and no-one was supposed to try and truly injure their fellow participants that didn't mean that everyone involved would be honorable.

 

Oberyn himself was planning to leave Amory Lorch with a minor wound that would be poisoned to lead him to an agonizing death over the course of days. Lyarra's Northern heart rebelled against the idea in some ways, but she found she couldn't fault it. The man had stabbed a girl no older than Rickon dozens of times with a blade when she was hiding under her father's bed. No matter the circumstances, the man should have lost his head as soon as his crime was discovered. If the King was too busy wallowing in long-past griefs and coddling his own temper to see justice done, then the man might as well face vengeance instead. Had Amory Lorch wanted to avoid such, he'd had years to join the Black willingly, hadn't he?

 

Lyarra couldn't think of the man without fearing for her own babe. Her husband and his House considered the King their enemies. The King was so jealous of the Mark on her wrist and his imagination slotting her into her aunt's place that he'd resented her pregnancy badly at first. That scared her, and no matter how he was now playing the gallant, she'd never forget the look of disgust on his face when she'd first blurted the information out. She didn't know what had happened to the glorious young knight of her father's stories, but he wasn't currently living in King's Landing, and she wasn't trusting her babe to his mercy anymore than Princess Elia had been able to.

 

Oberyn began to twist in his sleep, his breathing speeding up. Putting aside her project, though it was nearly done, Lyarra sighed. Gently and carefully - in case he woke up swinging - Lyarra reached out and stroked her husband's face. She scraped her fingers gently through his short beard and drew a fingertip over the lines of his mustache. Eventually, his eyes slowly blinked open and his whole body stiffened, then relaxed. She didn't recognize the language he muttered in, but it was obviously obscene.

 

"If vengeance is not to be had here, and we do not find proof of the information the Guild seeks, we will leave this cursed place in but days, I swear it."

 

"If I thought we could get away with it, I'd ask to leave tomorrow." Lyarra sighed, then shook her head and forced a smile onto her face. "I  _ do _ want to see the tourney fair before we go, though. Arya says it's really something."

 

"We will go between the archery contest and melee." Oberyn agreed, sitting up. "There is a great mummers show with tumblers and dancers, to entertain the tourney crowd. It usually goes on for two hours."

 

"Two hours better spent away from the royal box."

 

"Precisely."

 

***

* * *

Lord Renly Baratheon normally enjoyed tourneys, but he found that he could little enjoy this one. Oh, watching his soulmate joust was as exciting as ever, even if he never made it so far in the competitions as his young lover. It was simply that he found he couldn't draw the forgiveness from his soul that he wished to.

 

He knew that Robert hadn't meant any ill by usurping his household authority over Shireen's future husband. That was the problem with Robert that Renly was slowly growing aware of. His brother didn't think before he acted. It was a fault Renly felt justifiably skilled in identifying, because before the Plague had decimated the Stormland, he'd been at least as guilty of it as the King.

 

It shamed him now, to think of the foolish boy he'd been. He'd sat in Storm's End, playing at being a lord with no feeling for the people he really should be leading. Life was no dance and there was more to being a Lord Paramount than the appearance of being in charge. Knowing now what he knew about truly being a Lord Paramount, who handled matters of Justice seriously, who regulated his books, who guided and handed down orders to other powerful men? Renly couldn't help but mourn his other brother. In death he found that he'd never treated Stannis with the respect he deserved and wished he could go back and ask the man for advice.

 

For all that he'd dismissed Stannis as dour and his company unpleasant, Renly was only now realizing he didn't know him. No-one who was truly awful could produce such a shining example of goodness as he'd found in Shireen. His little niece, who he'd dismissed and ignored for being ugly. What strength she had.

 

First, Shireen survived a Greyscale infection as a babe. Then, she'd lived for how long with nothing but her horrid mother and that crazy jester for company? Yes, she'd had Stannis, and Renly was realizing his brother was much better than he'd thought he'd been, but children needed  _ friends _ . Didn't he lament the loneliness of his own childhood often enough?

 

_ Stannis, Brother, I wish you'd lived to see her. _ Renly thought with regret. I _ was overcome with worry, riding all over the damned Stormlands trying to sort out the inoculations and reassure our people, and Loras was trapped abed, turning to stone. It was she who gave everyone hope and kept them calm at Storm's End while I was out. A little girl, but so damned brave. _

 

"Uncle?"

 

"Yes, sweetling?" Renly shook his head, shoving the grim thoughts away and grinning.

 

"Can we go to the fair instead of watching the mummers? They remind me of Patchface."

 

"Of course we can. Go get your Uncle Loras, and then we'll explore."

 

Renly would far rather not be reminded of the mad fool. He was just glad the man had died in the fire on Dragonstone. He was also glad not to ask for details of the blaze. He'd heard various strange stories of the Red Witch that had conned his brother's wife into converting to the Red God, and then ensnared Stannis as well. Ser Davos Seaworth would only say the woman had been evil, and nothing - not drink, not company, not even an order from his lord - could get him to say anything else. Of Stannis' fate, Ser Davos obviously held only grief for his lord and friend, and Renly decided he had too much respect for his brother's memory and for Ser Davos himself to pry.

 

Besides, he might not want to know…

 

"You're heading to the fair, then, Lord Renly?"

 

"Yes, Lord Stark, it seems we are." Renly replied politely and rose to his feet as he looked at the Warden of the North.

 

The older man had sought him out after Renly had made his bows and took Shireen from the Royal Box to go seek out the Tyrells. Today Loras had decided to sit with his father and grandmother, and Renly couldn't blame him. The Queen had arrived at the Royal Box today pale, wan, and all but seeping venom from her pores only to collapse a few moments into the archery tournament with blood staining her skirts.

 

She'd been rushed out of the Royal Box and back to the Red Keep with her brother the Kingslayer attending, along with Lord Tywin. The King had followed, buoyed up by his dearest friend and his foster father, the Hand. He'd returned an hour or so later, grim and drinking very heavily with sad blue eyes.

 

The Queen might have thought it was just her Moon's Blood this morning, but it was now clear that she'd miscarried. Pycelle had seen to her and confirmed that she'd been maybe two moons along with child before losing it. Not enough to put the Queen or her womb in danger, but enough to cast more doubt on her ability to continue the imperiled Baratheon dynasty.

 

Personally, Renly would be happy to see the lioness replaced by another. A year or two ago he and Loras had thought that Margaery might get to be Queen, but that was no longer a good option. The Reach's peasantry was more riled than his own, mostly because the religious strife was so much worse there. In the Stormlands, Renly had made sure that his people knew to ignore the Septons and Septas and simply get the inoculation as soon as the goats began arriving from Dorne. In Loras' homeland, however, the Faith had been able to convince far too many not to get an inoculation until it was too late, and now the fervor against the Seven was strongest there. Margaery needed to wed within the Reach to shore up ties, as Garlan had.

 

It would be up to Willas to make a good foreign marriage. It rather tickled Renly's fancy that the marriage in question was supposed to be to one of the Sand Snakes. It was, well, rather natural to look down on bastards, to make a bad pun of it. In the Reach, the Cradle of the Faith, it had always been taken for granted that one would do so. That Willas Tyrell himself was planning to go courting amongst the Sand Snakes, their hated Dornish enemies' bastards, was delightfully ironic. The fact that the very loan from the Tyrells that had been used to pay back Ned Stark by the Crown would, in turn, be used to get a legitimization for Willas' chosen bride was just going to make it better in a darkly humorous way.

 

"Have your daughters enjoyed the fair?" Renly recalled himself to his manners and asked Lord Stark.

 

"Lady Arya has, but Princess Lyarra is only now going to experience her first tourney fair. I am going to join Prince Oberyn and my daughters, would you care to join us as well? The Lady Shireen and Ser Loras are more than welcome."

 

Renly balanced the invitation against what he wanted and decided in its favor.

 

"Mine niece would enjoy more time around your daughters, Lord Stark, thank you."

 

"Call me Lord Eddard." The older man offered him his hand. "We are practically kin, and I find I am grieved not to know you better."

 

Surprised, but pleased, Renly shook the rather grim man's hand.

 

"You will not be staying with the King?"

 

"He's bid me to go, for now."

 

Renly could see the worry on Ned Stark's long face and winced. He couldn't help feeling the same. Being angry with Robert and wishing Robert ill were two different things. The Queen's miscarriage was a tragedy, as little as he liked the woman.

 

"Lord Stark!"

 

Shireen's arrival and cheerful greeting was a gift from the Gods and Renly thanked them again for sending Davos and his shipful of refugees from Dragonstone to Storm's End. They'd brought with them hope. Not to mention bringing family.

 

"Lady Shireen." Lord Stark's grim lips turned up in the slightest of smiles and he bowed towards Renly's niece. "Ser Loras."

 

"Lord Stark, a pleasure as always."

 

Loras' bow was everything it ought to be, but Renly was temporarily distracted in admiring how the pale buckskin breeches his lover had on clung to his backside. Thankfully Lord Stark didn't seem to notice. Shireen had his attention, asking happily after the man's daughters. Renly had been more than a little pleased to find that Princess Lyarra was friendly to his niece, despite the fact that many disdained her for her strong jaw, large ears, and the faint red marks upon her face and neck where her greyscale scars had once lived.

 

"The Princess Lyarra and Lady Arya are waiting for us now." Lord Stark smiled and, to Renly's surprise, offered Shireen his arm with perfect seriousness.

 

Pleased and shy at his gallantry, Shireen took the Lord Paramount's arm with equal solemnity. Renly had to stifle a laugh. Loras pinched his own arm in retaliation. They joined the man in walking towards wherever the other part of his party was waiting. Renly was left a little nervous at the Quiet Wolf's next words, however.

 

"I recall you saying to my daughter how you wished to meet a direwolf."

 

"Well, only one of  _ yours _ . I do not think I would like to meet a wild one!"

 

"Wise choice." Lord Stark agreed with perfect seriousness, but Renly thought he might have caught a glint of hidden humor in the man's dark gray eyes. "You will have your chance, however. Due to… an incident this morning it was decided by the Prince that Nymeria and Ghost would attend their ladies this morning."

 

"You brought the  _ direwolves _ to the tourney?" Loras asked, shocked.

 

"We did."

 

"What happened?" Renly frowned, wondering what could cause such a decision. So far the Starks' wolves had been kept mostly out of sight at court.

 

"A selection of fruit was brought to the Dornish quarters." Lord Stark's expression went downright frigid. "It was found to be soaked in a poison undetectable to the human nose. Ghost, however, wouldn't let anyone eat from the bowl. Prince Oberyn put it through some test involving chemicals and determined what it was."

 

"Someone made an attempt on the Dornish parties' lives in the Red Keep?"

 

Loras stepped forward to ask directly and Renly shook his head, trying to follow all of the little skeins of logic that spread out from not only the event, but also the fact that Lord Stark was telling them. He was realizing that his was not a mind gifted for politics, though he was growing prouder of his ability to lead. He spent a moment grateful that Lady Olenna was in the capitol. She might mock him a bit, but she would answer his questions honestly and help him and Loras work out what was going on where Ned Stark would speak to him so frankly.

 

"Aye." Lord Stark spat, then looked down at Shireen. "You needn't look so worried. The Princess is fine."

 

"So she didn't eat any?"

 

"No one did."

 

"Good." Shireen all but wilted in relief, then her expression hardened. For just a moment, she reminded Renly fiercely of her father. "I hope that someone is being punished for this. Who's investigating it?"

 

"Lord Barristan is looking into it, at the King's direct order."

 

"What was in the fruit?" Renly wanted to know.

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought that the Red Viper might have arranged such a thing to cause more turmoil. Lord Stark looked down at Shireen, obviously hesitating to go on. Shireen looked back up at him, her expression totally serious.

 

"I took care of Ser Loras while he had the greyplague and I've had greyscale myself, Lord Stark. I've buried my mother and saw my father fall in the grips of a mad Red Priestess. If it's bad, then I'll take comfort in the fact that it was averted, but I don't need to be coddled."

 

Renly was desperately glad he wasn't wearing plate. It was really uncomfortable to puff up with sudden pride while wearing such armor. As it was, Lord Stark's approving nod of agreement with Shireen had Renly threading his fingers through Loras' and squeezing his and and to all Seven Hells with anyone who saw it. That was their girl!

 

"Likely whatever Tyanna of the Tower gave the Black Brides." Lord Stark said darkly. "According to Prince Oberyn, it's not strictly a poison. Rather it's a chemical used in metal work, but it… does something to unborn children to make them unnatural."

 

Shireen's expression turned tragic, before morphing once more into resolute anger. For his own part, Renly felt sick. Everyone knew the tale of the Black Brides and how Queen Tyanna had given Maegor the Cruel's other wives some kind of potion that had left one babe to be born legless with male and female parts, and the other to be born twisted and with small wings. That someone had tried to recreate that travesty with an innocent young bride of five-and-ten and who was a guest of the King, was  _ unthinkable _ .

 

"Has Ser Barristan discovered anything?" Loras asked.

 

"The servant who brought the fruit up was given the platter by one of the cook's assistants." Lord Stark said darkly. "However, the assistant was found with his throat slit in the wine cellar later."

 

"This isn't the first time this has happened." Renly leaned forward to speak quietly, reaching out to squeeze Shireen's shoulder as she fell back between himself and Loras, taking her hand in his own as he did so. "When Edric Storm, my brother's natural son, died of the plague it was suggested that one or two of his other known bastard sons might be sent to Storm's End for protection. Both were found with their throats slit after they'd been moved to the Red Keep to await their ship."

 

"I had not heard that." Lord Stark couldn't have looked more grim if he tried.

 

"I would speak to you more on the matter, then, when we are not in the company of ladies." Renly agreed and Loras nodded beside him as he caught sight of the Lady Gwyn's bright hair gleaming in the sun. "Let's put on a better face, for the Princess."

 

"Yes, we should cheer her up!" Shireen agreed firmly. "I - Oh, my!"

 

Renly paused and nearly took a step back in surprise. The Princess Lyarra was indeed waiting near a bookbinder's stall, perusing the wares. Beside her, snuffling idly at the edge of a table, was an absolutely spectacular beast. Perhaps eighteen stone of lean predator stood, cloaked in a thick coat of gleaming white fur, a black nose, and eerie red eyes.

 

A little back from the Princess Lyarra stood Arya Stark. She wore a gray dress decorated around the neck with blue trout, and around the hem with a few mud stains. Beside her stood a gray wolf of slightly smaller size, but with keen and aggressive golden eyes. This she-wolf was pulling up a mouthful of tall grass and seemed intent on flinging it at the laughing young lady standing next to her.

 

"Shireen!" Lady Arya greeted his niece with a grin, surprising Renly. "You found your yellow dress!"

 

"I  _ did _ !" Shireen perked up. "It got packed away with Ser Loras' things, though I don't know why."

 

Loras sighed and Renly squeezed his hand in support. The mustard-yellow monstrosity wasn't a hideous dress in and of itself. It was simply-made and cut in an inoffensive way. The problem was that Shireen just looked  _ awful _ in that shade of yellow. She either needed something lighter or to avoid their primary House color entirely.

 

"I like it." Arya offered.

 

Renly sighed and Loras squeezed his hand.

 

"It's my  _ favorite _ ." Shireen agreed, then turned. "I met Lady Arya with the Princess. She's found the best little library in the castle, Uncle Renly!"

 

"Well, I'm glad you enjoy it." Renly allowed. "I've never had much use for books myself, but to each their own."

 

"We have to watch Willas. He's discovered Shireen's a reader as avid as he is and my brother is trying to steal her." Loras added as he stepped forward to bow to the Princess and the man stand beside her. "Your Graces."

 

At least Renly now had a reason for why the Red Viper had been a cloud of hovering venom all day. If his child had been put at risk, who blamed him? Whatever else was said about the man, Renly had noted that he never failed to speak of his bastards with pride.

 

"Ser Loras, Lord Renly." Prince Oberyn inclined his head and shoulders as his wife turned and curtsied and the stall's owner dropped into a deep bow. "I hope you are both doing well."

 

"I'm looking forward to facing you on the lists tomorrow, Prince Oberyn." Loras grinned back sharply and the Prince returned it.

 

"Indeed." He allowed. "I am myself in the mood for combat."

 

"Plan you to join the melee, then?"

 

"No, not at the moment."

 

As he said so the man slipped a hand around his wife's waist, drawing her against his side. Renly couldn't help noticing the guards that circled them. There were seven Dornish guards and, to his surprise, he noticed no less than six Northern men quietly trailing their Lord Paramount. Renly himself never bothered to walk through a tourney fair with more than Loras by his side. They were both armed, and the smallfolk's ire had never extended to him. Seeing a Prince of Dorne and his own brother's favorite damned person in the world felt the need for such guards in King's Landing itself sent a frisson of unease up his spine.

 

It was definitely time to sit down with the Queen of Thorns for a long chat.

 

"Princess Lyarra, your dress is very pretty too." Shireen said earnestly and Renly covered a smile as Lord Stark looked put out.

 

It was a Dornish gown. Made of pale lavender linen caught in tight pleats, it was gathered over each shoulder and down her back in a deep V-shape. A smattering of violets had been embroidered around the neckline and knee-level hem.The material itself was thin enough to be translucent. Thankfully, she wore a full white cotton skirt underneath it, gathered around her waist just below the dip of her navel and covering her to her ankles. To keep herself otherwise decent, she wore a dark purple breast band made of ribbons and two triangles of darker, thicker material to cover her chest.

 

Her hair was drawn up into a white netting again, keeping the curls out of her way. Renly admired it, and the lace shawl she'd thrown over her shoulders and back. It was a product of the heavier cotton lace that the Northerners crocheted rather than the fashionable Myrish lace favored at court, but it suited the lady well. Likewise, the wide, polished wooden bracelets on her wrist looked like living satin against her pale skin. Her only expensive ornament was the huge ruby that gleamed from her left third finger.

 

"Thank you. I quite like your hair done up the way it is now." Lyarra complimented Shireen and she beamed.

 

"Uncle Renly did it!"

 

Renly tried not to look caught or embarrassed. He'd just brazen it out. What else could he do? Shireen's maid was nice enough, which he supposed mattered first when it came to building his niece's confidence, but she was forever pulling her hair back. It made poor Shireen's large ears look bigger yet, and Renly just hadn't been able to take it any longer. Instead he'd taken her in hand that morning and braided her hair himself, leaving little wings to cover her ears and pulling the rest into an elaborate braid he'd threaded with white ribbons.

 

"Lord Renly is a talented man." Lady Gwyn Parren, who'd been quietly talking with the heavyset, cheerful Frey girl offered.

 

"Very! Is that a seven strand braid? I can never keep it even if it's more than five."

 

"It's a seven strand braid, yes, Lady Walda." Renly cleared his throat. "The secret it clothespins."

 

"Clothespins."

 

"Lyarra's curls would devour any attempt to restrain them with clothespins the way the sea devours ships." Lady Gwyn advised.

 

"I was thinking for  _ you _ , Gwyn."

 

"Oh."

 

Then the girls were off talking again, with Shireen creeping forward to join in. Lady Arya quickly grew bored and reached out to draw Shireen back. Renly watched nervously as his niece was 'introduced' to the gray direwolf. Nymeria the she-wolf, however, showed nothing but good manners. She sniffed Shireen's hand, wagged her tail once, and then returned to trotting beside Arya as Prince Oberyn turned the party further into the fair.

 

Talk at that point drifted aimlessly and Renly relaxed quite a bit. Lord Stark looked as though he wished to discuss something with Renly, but Renly himself was in no mood for business of any kind. If Robert had swayed the man to make a suit involving his second son and Shireen, then Lord Stark could come see him after the tourney. He could journey to the Stormlands or send a damned raven as was proper and respectful. Renly was done acting like he was a boy playing at being a Lord Paramount, and he'd be damned if he'd let Robert continue to treat him in such a manner.

 

They spent an hour thusly, and it was pleasant. Prince Oberyn was clearly in a vicious mood beneath his polite exterior and Renly didn't blame him. That the Princess stayed close to him, her hands straying into his own or leaning against his side, was likely for the best. Renly himself knew the calming influence a soulmate could have upon you. He'd been endlessly soothed by Loras' presence, and found himself doing the same when Loras was in a snit.

 

Though he wished that Loras would try  _ harder _ to get along with Brienne of Tarth. The Lady Brienne was ugly, yes, and unorthodox, but she'd been a  _ gift _ during the Plague. Most of his guards had gone down with it, but he still needed to ride out, and he'd felt that no-one was left to carry a sword at his side. Then, of all of the crazy things, Brienne of Tarth had arrived at his home with several small fishing vessels packed with goats.

 

One of Prince Doran's shipments of inoculation goats had ended up diverted by a storm. They'd taken safe harbor at the Isle of Tarth. There, Lady Brienne had taken stock of the damage to the Dornish ships and jumped into action. Already left in power by her father's death, she'd organized the bravest of her island's fishermen and redistributed the goats on their ships. Then, ignoring the risk of taking such small vessels into Shipbreaker Bay, she'd arrived with their salvation in time to save Loras.

 

Really, Loras was just unreasonable about Brienne. Yes, she had a bit of of a thing for Renly and Renly knew it, but he found it sweet. She'd just been kicked a little by life was all, and she'd find a better target for her affections eventually. As for Loras' main complaint? Well, what did he expect to happen when he challenged the Lady Brienne to a sparring match? Loras was uncontested on the lists, but Brienne was both a better swordsma- well, swords _ woman _ than Loras was and she was a better brawler. It had taken him days to unruffle his love's feathers after that…

 

"Prince Oberyn," Renly was entirely interested in keeping up the veneer of fake cheer their group was peddling, however, and contributed to it without a hint of shame that it was a lie. Just a few more days and they could all go home, likely enough, and leave Robert to whatever mess he was intent on making. "Do you-."

 

" _ Nymeria _ !" Lady Arya's shocked cry came at the same time that a gray blur bounced off of Loras' knees and sent him crashing backwards into Renly's chest as Renly caught his soulmate.

 

" _ Ghost _ !" Princess Lyarra let out her own cry, but it came out more as some kind of firm order.

A moment later a man's frightened and outraged shriek filled the air and Ned Stark was sprinting after his youngest daughter as she followed her wolf. The Princess did the same with the Viper at her heels, and then all of them were following along with the guards. Renly wondered why he couldn't have a normal day at a tourney anymore.

 

* * *

Lyarra had just enough time to feel Ghost's flash of angry protectiveness and then she was off like a shot behind Nymeria. With Arya running after her own companion, Lyarra could hardly do anything else. Oberyn was on her heels, the guards were as well, and then they were breaking into a small area dotted with benches and tables near a stall selling ale, pickled onions, and brown bread.

 

A scream of alarm went up when the two direwolves raced into the area and a table was overturned as people fled. Lyarra had no idea what had gotten into Nymeria. Their wolves were protective, yes, but they'd never raced off to  _ attack _ someone!

 

Nymeria's path took the gray she-wolf directly for a fat man in plate leaning against a post holding up the canopy over the beer merchant. Seeing the wolf coming the man lurched upright and then stumbled back, moving behind the overturned table and pulling his sword. Nymeria, however, didn't advance any further. She came to a stop in front of the man who was now pinned between the table he'd chosen as cover and two intersecting walls of ale barrels stacked up well over Lyarra's head behind him. The gray she-wolf danced back and forth on her feet, looking for some way to get to the man and then Ghost arrived. The white wolf who'd once been the runt of the pack barreled into her smaller sister, pushing her over and preventing her from further action.

 

" _ Lyarra _ !" Oberyn's voice was sharp and a moment later he was there, pushing her behind him and turning to the knight. "My apologies. Arya, get Nymeria under control, now."

 

"I don't know why she did it, she's upset!" Arya defended her friend, getting ready to step forward but Lyarra saw Ser Loras reach out and grab Arya's shoulder instead.

 

"Should the child really approach-"

 

Arya slipped out of his grip, glaring as Lord Stark stepped forward.

 

"It's fine, the wolves won't harm their-"

 

"Lyarra, are-." Gwyn, who'd been at the back of the group, slipped forward past the guards and moved up beside her friend only to suddenly suck in a breath.

 

Lyarra watched in confusion as the fat knight looked at Gwyn with surprised recognition. Gwyn, for her part, paled. Her large blue eyes grew rounder, and then she went entirely still. After a moment a slow, strange smile curled Gwyn's lips upward and she dropped into a curtsey.

 

"Ser Amory Lorch. What  _ were _ the chances of meeting you here, and wearing House Kenning's colors?"

 

A wave of savage satisfaction washed over Lyarra through the bond she shared with her soulmate. It boiled, like the hottest of the pools in the Godswood, and it hissed like the angry Viper to whom the feelings belonged. Lyarra whipped her eyes to her husband, who'd gone perfectly still beside her, and then back at the man standing frozen behind the table. Nymeria, as if sensing a job well done returned to Arya's side and stood there, all but radiating the satisfaction of a hunt well-conducted.

 

"My cousin, Marla, wished me to wear her husband’s colors for her as husband cannot come to the tourney." Ser Amory's words eked out as if in defense, though his piggy eyes were fixed in worry on the Prince standing opposite him. "Who are you with, Lady Gwyn?"

 

"It is not my place to introduce royalty."

 

The man's pasty skin got paler yet and Lyarra felt a mix of satisfaction at seeing his fear and worry at what was about to happen. Prince Oberyn he might be but if he murdered someone in the middle of the fair…

 

"Lord Stark?" The man's eyes locked on Lyarra's father.

 

Her father maintained stony silence.

 

"What goes on here?" Lord Renly demanded instead, stepping forward and looking around with an expression that was a mix of confusion and dismayed irritation. "Ser Amory Lorch, of House Lorch, in the Westerlands?"

 

"Yes, I'm here to compete in the melee." The man bowed awkwardly towards the Stormlord. "You must be Lord Renly Baratheon. You are the Master of Laws, yes? You can see that I've done no wrong. I was drinking in peace when these  _ beasts _ accosted me! I don't even know them, I came straight from the Westerlands-"

 

"I am Lord of Storm's End, but Master of Laws no longer." The handsome young man wore nothing resembling his usual light-hearted demeanor. "May I ask what you've done lately to earn the ire of a pair of animals who've never met you? Or, for that matter, such attention from your betters. Prince Oberyn?"

 

"Ser Amory is not unaware of what he has done to earn my regard." The Red Viper said, moving slightly to the side with the sun catching on the hilt of the sword strapped at his waist. His black eyes never left the broad, reddening face of the man he was staring at. He didn't even seem to blink. "Indeed, I invite him to share the tale."

 

"I would hear it as well." Ser Loras added, frowning at all and sundry.

 

"It - I've done nothing."

 

" _ Nothing _ ?"

 

Oberyn's barely audible hiss served to fill the silence in the area. They'd gathered a small crowd, but the group was all smallfolk. Whispers raced around, the words Dorne' and 'Martell' carrying through the crowd. Ghost pressed against Lyarra's legs and she suddenly blinked against the strange feeling of looking out of too many eyes. Gathering herself she turned towards the crowd, compelled to look there. She found hard faces staring at the Westerlands' knight, and noticed that many of the smallfolk had availed themselves of chunks of wood. A few had rough knives in hand or, in two cases, wickedly curved hand sickles.

 

"What's he done?!" A big, beefy man wearing the stained apron of a barkeep demanded. "Yer' Grace, what's he done to your people?!"

 

Oberyn's head turned now, to look out at the crowd as a small wall of noise greeted it. Angry yelling joining in. Someone in the back yelled something that might have been, _ 'Friends of Dorne',  _ and then a ripple of noise passed along with it in obvious agreement. Amory Lorch backed up against the wall of barrels.

 

Lyarra felt her own heart race as she looked around her. The crowd gathering was a hostile one, but they weren't hostile to  _ her _ . Her father's eyes were wide and his guards looked nervous. She found she couldn't blame them or Lord Renly for the dawning look of comprehension on his face. Lyarra herself had only just realized the frightening reality behind the ecstatic greeting the commons had given them when they first arrived at the city.

 

It wasn't just gratitude. Lyarra realized then that it really meant  _ cooperation _ . It meant that the common people would help and follow you.  _ This _ , Lyarra realized with a chill,  _ had to be the thing at the root of all armies _ . This was power, and everything would be determined by how her husband, currently a hissing mass of grief and anger, wielded it. She watched Oberyn raise one hand tensely and wait.

 

"I've got it well in hand, good people!" The Prince called loudly. "Ser Amory and I shall meet each other on the tourney field, and settle it there as knights do during the melee. Shall we not, Ser Amory? You are a  _ true _ knight, are you not?"

 

The man swallowed, and then all but spat the words. "I'm a knight." 

 

" _ Indeed _ ." Oberyn agreed, his lips twisting into a sneer. "A knight. Just as I, you were anointed in the holy oils and stood vigil, and swore to protect women and  _ children _ lest the Gods themselves strike you down."

 

"The Seven haven't been that involved lately, my Prince!" Someone shouted from within the crowd and Lyarra blinked as she recognized a cabbage merchant she'd talked to on the slow original progress to the Red Keep. "I've got a length of rope if you don't want to wait for the melee."

 

Lyarra felt ill. Thankfully Oberyn just smiled at the old merchant. It wasn't a kind expression.

 

"Don't demean your rope that way, good man! I can wait a quarter hour more, if you'd be so good to keep an eye on Ser Amory, however? Mind you, I want him to arrive at the melee  _ just _ as he is now, you understand."

 

A roar of agreement came up and the crowd didn't so much disperse as move a little. It began to break up, with some going back to their tasks. Others, however, lingered. They were mostly large young men. All were armed in some fashion. They stood around the edges, their eyes trained on Ser Amory when they weren't looking towards Oberyn for some sign of approval.

 

"Till then, Ser Amory." Oberyn bowed slightly, and it was like a snake dipping its head to strike. Then his hands were resting on her shoulders and he was turning her. "Come, darling, you should sit. You're pale."

 

She let him nudge her away from the bright tents of the fair and back towards the line of stands. Lyarra's heart was still pounding. Her mind was whirring and she suddenly felt both ill and light-headed. She leaned heavily on Oberyn and clutched his arm.

 

"Lyarra?"

 

Quiet concern broke through his bloodlust, but Lyarra just felt her own worry. His whisper lashed up her spine. She caught sight of Gwyn, no longer looking lazily dangerous, and Walda, who simply looked upset by the situation. Lord Renly was speaking in low tones with Ser Loras, who had both his hands on Lady Shireen's shoulders while the girl stood next to Arya, who was caught between her father and Nymeria. All around them the guards moved in different directions.

 

"Prince Oberyn," Lord Renly interrupted their exchange, turning with a grim face, "That is a knight of House Lannister, or he was once before… What I mean is, the man's older than you are by a handful of years. He was at the Sack, wasn't he?"

 

"He murdered the Princess Rhaenys, pulling her from beneath her father's bed and stabbing her half a hundred times." Gwyn answered, her tone grim. "He brags about it when he's with the guards at the Rock, though he was pushed from their number nearly three years ago for presuming too much on Lord Tywin's appreciation for the Sack."

 

"Fuck…" Lord Renly Baratheon said with feeling, earning a shocked little noise from his niece.

 

Without looking up, the man pulled his purse from his belt and handed it to his soulmate. Ser Loras passed the purse to Lady Shireen. Arya watched in fascination as Lady Shireen withdrew a silver stag, added it to her own purse, and handed it to the knight who handed it back to the lord.

 

"...I see." Renly chewed his lips, then nodded grimly as he looked down at Shireen with his blue eyes softening before he looked up, and in that moment he didn't look like a young and joyful knight at all. He looked precisely like a lord whose family words were, ' _ Ours is the Fury'. _

 

"Indeed?" Oberyn asked quietly.

 

"Yes, I understand." The Stormlord agreed. "Loras, would you take our niece to Ser Davos? He's waiting to remove the luggage until tonight, and I think I've changed my mind. She can leave for Storm's End tonight and we'll catch up by horse. Her palfrey can wait for our next trip to Highgarden."

 

"Of course, my lord." Ser Loras agreed while Lady Shireen looked alarmed.

 

Lord Renly dropped down, showing not the least shame in embracing the young girl and pressing a kiss to her cheek as he rose back to his feet. A few quiet words passed between them and Lyarra turned to her husband. He still had his hand on her waist, steadying her, but his expression was far away.

 

"You said you wouldn't fight in the melee."

 

"I said I would not if he did not appear. He has, so I shall."

 

"Oberyn-."

 

"Ser Arron, please take half the guards and escort the Princess back to the wheelhouse and then the Red Keep. I believe she is faint and would see her rest properly."

 

" _ Oberyn _ !" Lyarra protested, one of her hands going to press over her belly both because of her thoughts racing to the danger of this foolhardy, impulsive decision and because she genuinely felt nauseous. "You-."

 

Suddenly he dragged her roughly against his chest and pressed his lips hard against her own. Lyarra kissed him back more out of habit than any passion. The scrape of his beard was uncomfortably rough, for once, against her face and when she pulled back she didn't know what to say other than to protest again.

 

"Oberyn, I do not need to go back. I need you-."

 

"Your husband shall be  _ fine _ , worry not." He kissed her again, clearly to shut her up, and patted her belly with his own hand in an unconcerned way that fired her own temper. Unfortunately as he nudged her aside Lyarra found herself standing beside Ghost and between Ser Deziel and Ser Arron with nowhere to really go. "Your Prince bids you to rest, Princess, and I will not be gainsaid. The rest of the ladies shall go back as well. Lady Gwyn, Lady Walda, Lady Arya - see to your Princess' comfort."

 

"But-." Arya started to protest, but Lord Stark's hands landed firmly on her shoulders.

 

"Do as the Prince says." Lord Stark ordered, but his expression was not one of approval.

 

As Lyarra found herself being escorted away, unable to protest what was unmistakably an order from her husband and not sure she wanted to watch and see whatever could go horribly wrong anyway she reached out and buried one of her hands in Ghost's fur for support. The other arm she curled around Arya's shoulders.

 

"Come with me, Arya." Lyara said quietly. "There's nothing else to do here."

 

"Because everyone's being stupid." Arya muttered and Lyarra didn't disagree with her.

 

* * *

"My armor."

 

"My Lord?"

 

Ned turned and raised his eyebrows, and that was all the order needed to send Jory Cassel moving quickly in the necessary direction. He'd planned for this, of course, just in case, but it changed nothing about his fury over the necessity. Standing in a corner of the small pavilion that Ser Domeric Bolton had set up to house himself, his body servant, and his four personal guards during the Tourney, Ned began to strip out of his clothing with a snarl of frustration.

 

"Allow me." Domeric Bolton stepped forward and Ned looked at the young knight.

 

Had circumstances been different he might have relaxed slightly to see the lad's serious expression and steadfast, quiet competence. Instead he just nodded and carried on with it. Domeric Bolton was himself already dressed and armed. The fact that House Bolton's Heir was ready for the mock combat of the tourney at all was a surprise.

 

"I had thought, Ser Domeric, that your father had written to instruct you to stay clear of the melee."

 

"He did, however, if the  _ Warden of the North _ intends to participate I feel it is my duty to do so as well, given the circumstances."

 

"And what would you call the circumstances?"

 

"Prince Oberyn being a reckless prick, my Lord."

 

Ned snorted at that, but made no move to disagree or speak further. His temper was a rolling heat inside his belly as his blood came up. Like hot copper tubes distilling the winter roses whose essence brought the North much needed Southron coin in trade, his temper was distilling itself down as the ice in his veins turned to steam, as his wolf's blood began to boil.

 

Beside him, Domeric Bolton was as cold as the rushing waters of the river the Dreadfort was built on the banks of. The young man had the sense not to speak as he assisted Ned in preparing himself. He moved with the competence of one who'd been introduced to armor and weaponry with his first steps, and that was all Ned could ask for.

 

"Ned?  _ Ned _ !"

 

Eddard Stark startled a bit at hearing the King bellow his name outside of the plain canvas of Domeric Bolton's small pavilion. A moment later he came in, a flash of white cloaks briefly visible at the flap as the King strode through.

 

"Ned, what's this I hear of you joining the - you  _ are _ . Damn you, Ned, were you not going to tell me?"

 

"I hadn't the time, Your Grace, but I was going to send someone." Ned shook his head, and at Robert's look, forced an explanation past his temper that came out all snapping teeth and biting contempt. "The Red Viper chooses to fight, and I won't have Lyarra's life or child put at risk for his foolish pride. If I must watch the idiot's back to save my daughter from grief, I will."

 

King Robert snapped straight, the slight slouch brought about by his weight ironed out of his spine by a mix of indignation and clear pleasure at Ned's harsh words for his Dornish goodson. A flash of white teeth in the King's thick black beard signaled his delight. Ned realized, he should have at least attempted to speak with more moderation as soon as the King began to nod.

 

"You're right, Ned, you always are. Yes, we can't let that idiot harm your daughter."

 

" _ We _ \- Robert-."

 

"I won't hear a word against it." Robert argued and turned with a speed contrary to his bulk towards the door to the tent. "Not after - the Queen said it too. Dared to  _ forbid _ me, if you can believe that, but who is the King? I _ am _ , and today the King will  _ fight _ , Ned. With you by my side, just as we ought to have in a dozen tourneys back before this crown and the shit that came with it."

 

"Your Grace!"

 

"Not a word, Ned! I will see you on the field." Robert growled, raising one of his hands to silence Ned with a flash of the willfulness that had come with his crown. His expression broke open into one of fierce delight. "I haven't gotten to knock you on your arse in the yard since before… before everything."

 

"That's because I damned well have refused to raise my sword to you since we were fosterlings." Ned argued in return. "Nor will I do it now, and I am afraid you will find many of your opponents will do the same or feign failure in the face of their King."

 

"It's a tourney, Ned, and we're knights!" The King tossed over his shoulder as he left, calling for his armor and his hammer and leaving Ned to let out a stream of aggravated courses as his worries multiplied.

 

"Ser Domeric, have you an extra tourney sword?" Ned finally gave in and asked.

 

"Aye, Lord Stark." The young man agreed as he tied his thick, wavy, mass of dark brown hair back into a queue. The words were slightly slurred by the leather thong he was gripping in his teeth, waiting to secure the plait he was quickly working his hair into. "I've three. The choice is yours."

 

"Jory, see if you can't secure more appropriate weaponry for the other guards. The more eyes we have in the chaos that is coming, the better." Ned ordered as he walked over, fully kitted out in his mail and leathers with his helm tucked beneath one arm. Looking over the swords he chose the longest. "This is not your favored blade, is it?"

 

"No, I usually take the one-handed blade." The boy shook his head. "If it's in a melee, I carry my shield in the other, if it's a real fight, a long knife."

 

Ned nodded once and glanced at the sturdy, round pink shield leaning against the weapons rack. Careful of the tent's supports and cords and the single table and cot that occupied it, Ned tested the blunted tourney blade. He found it weighted well, plain and unornamented, but of good quality. It was not Ice, but it would do.

 

The time between giving up on arguing some sense into Oberyn Martell's thick skull and the melee's start arrived quickly. So quickly, in fact, that Ned had to stride through the crowd to find a place. There was standing room only, and he was frustrated to see he was at the back of the crowd of combatants who would storm the field and begin the fight to claim Robert's exhorbitant prize.

 

He knew not what the Viper was  _ thinking _ , if he was thinking at all, to place revenge above his babe's safety. What comfort had Aerys' corpse been to him in the face of a dead father, a dead brother, and Lyanna's glaring absence?  _ None _ . Ned would have thought that Lyarra's husband would have had the brains to realize that he courted the same bitter defeat that Ned had faced in the war: where revenge was scattered around him like ashes, all in pieces everywhere he looked, but offered him no comfort for what he lost.

 

Lorch could be killed just as dead in a back alleyway as he could be killed in a tourney. Ned disliked the idea of it, for it cheapened the little princess' justice to do it that way, but it wasn't as if Robert was offering them any choice. Even Tywin Lannister's agreement not to protect his creatures any longer was bitter, because it seemed as though the Old Lion thought he could throw scraps to the idea of justice itself. Here, it seemed to say, take care of this problem on your own time and at your own risk, but aren't I  _ generous _ for allowing you to do it without besmirching my own hands?

 

Ned caught the anger with both hands and twisted it like malleable clay. He kicked at the spillways governing the calm parts of his mind and let the hot blood his brother and sister had been known for flow free. Mostly, however, he just let his muscles relax and his breath fall into the even rhythm that came to him like second nature despite the years that had passed since he'd known battle.

 

A horn sounded and Robert made some kind of speech to which Ned paid little attention. He had no more use for fine Southron words than he had for Dornish dramatics at that moment. Instead he stood silent, seething, and when the horn sounded again, he entered the field.

 

Battle, even mock battle, is disorganized by nature. It was a fracas, and shining armor and bright surcoats made no difference in the outcome. The only frivolous trapping on that field that was of any help was the wildfyre soaked sword of the lazy red priest who Robert found to be such good company when drunk. Even that Ned found he wasn't swayed by; the blade burned, but there was no magic to it and it was no harder to avoid than any other blade.

 

After that it was all a matter of training so intense and so lastingly ingrained in him that it might as well have been instinct. Ned's sword rang, his plain, unornamented, and borrowed shield clattered with the blows of various weapons. He eventually lost it, but contented himself that throwing it into the face of the Tyroshi sellsword that had struck Lord Renly a blow to the back  _ (and Lord Renly never joined a melee, according to Jon Arryn, so why had the entire court seemingly lost its mind?)  _ was satisfying.

 

Underneath his anger, in the back of his mind, Ned could almost admire the whirlwind of weaponry that was Oberyn Martell and his spear. The man was older than Ned himself, but Ned wasn't sure he could have claimed such reflexes in his youth. Nor, in truth, such flexibility. His fighting style, his lighter armor, all of it spoke of a way of battle that was as different from Ned's training in the North and in the Vale as anything he'd ever seen.

 

He spared a moment's worry when he saw the man take a blow from a Marcher Lord's third son, but the Viper rolled with it and brought the butt of his spear around against the back of the boy's helm. It knocked the helmet flying and then sent the boy sprawling senseless in the dirt with only the vaguest hitch in the prince's movement.

 

Ned himself was relieved to see the two Dornish knights remaining, those who had been separated from their prince by the chaos, return to watch his back. Out of the corner of his eye Ned caught sight of the King. Robert's face was red, visible in the front of his helm, and his teeth were bared in anger. It wasn't the battle frenzy he'd been slightly afraid would take his friend, for he didn't think the King's reign could take Robert accidentally killing the wrong nobleman's Heir, but it was definitely not the pure happiness of battle Ned was sure Robert had expected to find.

 

The reason was obvious as a young knight far faster and nearly as tall as the King gave way beneath a hammer blow that should have only knocked his sword aside. Instead, the blade swung wildly away and the boy sprawled with deceptive neatness in the churned turf around the amiled and armored king. A glint caught Ned's eye and, seeing an unfamiliar man in mail and boiled leathers sliding a curved and sharpened knife, gleaming along every edge, from inside his plain brown surcat, Ned acted.

 

Slamming into the man shoulder-to-shoulder, Ned knocked the man heading for Robert's back off-balance. When he whirled around, keeping his feet with ease, Ned brought his sword up against the man's shield in a great, clanging blow with all of his strength. That rattled his opponent, who shoved both shield and sword aside to try and get to Ned with the knife.

With great relish Ned brought his own helm down on the bare head of the man with a resounding, fleshy, clunk. His opponent collapsed.

 

The fight carried on. In fact, to Ned, it dragged on until he was exhausted, his anger and his pride keeping him on his feet, and leaving him grateful that he'd never lived a soft life for all his rank. Sweat poured off him in the sticky heat as late morning turned to midday down by the Blackwater Rush. He fended off further attacks against the Viper's back and against the King until, finally, only a handful of opponents still stood, facing where Robert stood, his great warhammer all black iron and leather bindings as the King bellowed for challengers to come forth.

 

The few who were left dropped their swords. Ned caught Robert's eye and felt his lips turn up as he shook his head. For a moment, he was transported to the past as he took a knee before his foster-brother as he had so many times before when he'd refused to fight the Stormlander when his blood was up and battle lust upon either of them. To the side, he saw a grim-faced snake bow out as well, then quit the field as soon as was polite after Robert raised his voice to let the King's will be heard.

 

* * *

The Tourney Melee was as every other melee that Jon Arryn had seen in his long life, with but few exceptions. The raucous fight ran for nearly two hours. It was, as expected, a seething mass of violence as many people packed into a small area, intent on knocking each other from the fight to claim their prizes. It was dangerous as well, for the politics behind the melee had erupted into factions and the chaos meant that there was no way to track or control them. Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, had expected it to be horrible given everything he'd come to realize was pouring onto the field and waiting to erupt like wildfyre. Instead?

 

_ Instead _ , Lord Jon Arryn found himself grinning at this tourney as he hadn't since he was a lad.

 

"This is  _ not _ knightly conduct!" King Robert Baratheon stood in heavy mail and the new plate he'd had forged to fit him during the first plague riots. He was furious, he was roaring, and he pulled his helm off to show the sweat pouring down his red face as he bared his teeth at the bare field in anger. "This is  _ no way _ for knights of the realm to act!"

 

The crowd fell silent as they looked down at the field. The smallfolk had watched it with glee as they always did such entertainment. This time, however, Jon had been worried to see no few of them had their own temporary weapons in hand. Thank the Gods they hadn't felt the need to flood the field and use them.

 

_ No _ . Lord Arryn decided. He need not thank the Gods. _ I should thank Ned. _

 

In all of his life, Jon Arryn decided he had  _ never _ been prouder.

 

"Knights of my realm know their vows and know their duty!" The King continued to bellow. "They do not turn on the backs of other knights! They do not bring honed blades onto a melee field in the guise of tourney weapons! True knights to do flee the field in cowardice!"

 

The crowd, largely silent, began to slowly rile itself up. With each of the King's yelled statements a cry went up of agreement. It grew louder with each yell.

 

"They do not throw their victory away in the hopes of currying favor, like some boot-licking eunuch from Essos!" Robert spat upon the field. "No,  _ I will not have it. _ This purse goes to the  _ people _ ! The Master of Coin shall use it to buy in more grain for the city, and that is final. Your King wills that if no man has the valor to fight me honestly, then no man shall have the prize! Let it feed the women and children instead!"

 

For the first time in what felt like lifetimes, the commons began to cheer their King. Something in Jon Arryn's chest that had been clenched in pain for ages released. He sagged back against his seat in the Royal Box and then lurched to his feet. Grinning still, he headed down onto the field, and then towards the pavillions.

 

As he'd thought he might, he found who he was seeking in the yellow and black pavillion that Lord Renly had set up and shared with his soulmate during Lord Loras’ tourney preparations. Jon Arryn was announced and permitted inside to find Lord Renly straddling a chair, leaning his chest against the back while the upper parts of his armor sat cast aside atop a table. The torn layers he wore underneath were cast there as well. A ugly bruise punctuated by a broad, but shallow gash crossed his back from shoulder to his lower ribs on the opposite side.

 

Ser Loras was pacing as a Maester washed off Lord Renly's wound. "Renly, you're well, aren't you? You said you were getting feeling back?"

 

"I only lost feeling in my legs for a few seconds, but everything's pins and needles."

 

"As soon as we get this cleaned, Lord Renly, I want you to lay on your stomach on the cot. We'll carry you out, for I don't want you to strain your back. You must rest it for  _ days _ , if not longer, just to make sure the blow did no real damage."

 

"I'll murder that swine  _ myself _ !" Ser Loras declared.

 

"You can have whatever your King leaves for you, Ser Loras." Robert snarled, collapsing into a chair in his own armor and accepting a gray handkerchief from the other high ranking man in the room with a gasp. "Thanks, Ned.  _ Dammit _ , can a man get something to drink here?"

 

"Do you need a goblet or will the bottle do, Your Grace?" Ser Loras asked distractedly.

 

"I'll take the bottle."

 

The Knight of Flowers got up from holding his soulmate's hand and went over to a low wooden tub which was filled with water and bottles of wine. Taking one out he handed it to the King. Jon watched as Robert pulled the cork out with his teeth, spitting it aside before taking a deep swig of the undoubtedly fine vintage.

 

"You fought like a damned  _ demon _ , Ned." The King finally gave up on the wine and turned, offering a grin rather than the anger that had wreathed his face before. "I told you that I wanted to see you in a tourney before I died. Now I can go, I suppose!"

 

"You're not to even  _ think _ of leaving me with such a mess, young man." Jon stated, his tone a mix of censure and gaiety he couldn't quite stop and both his foster sons looked up at him in surprise, having apparently waved him in without thinking. "You did well, Ned, I'm proud of you as well. Robert, the people needed that reassurance, you could not have done better."

 

Ned's rather abashed smile had nothing on the sudden beaming delight that came from the King. His anger and grief of the morning had been transported then. Perhaps, like Jon, he could almost forget the years and losses that marked the time between his fostering of these sons of his heart and where they stood now.

 

"Someone had to take the field after the Viper did." Ned allowed, then surprised Jon by dropping down onto a bench next to the King's chair and holding his hand out. "I'm about to die of the heat, though. Damnation, I've  _ forgotten _ what it's like to fight in plate and leathers in the heat. At least Dorne was  _ dry _ . I feel as if the I'm drowning in the air."

 

"And I'd forgotten that you find your tongue after a good fight, little though you know where it is during most other times!" Robert replied happily and passed the bottle of wine to Ned, who took a long pull of it and then shook sweat from his hair as though he were a real wolf.

 

Ser Loras looked as though he had no idea what to do with himself. Lord Renly was staring at the King and stoic Lord Stark in blank incomprehension. Jon decided, just this once, to join the madness and pulled up a chair of his own and sat into it, holding his own hand out for the bottle.

 

"You'll be fine, Renly, but do as the Maester says." Robert rallied enough to look on his brother with kind eyes. "Ser Loras, take care of him. I've no brother left but the one the Gods gave you to look after, you hear your King?"

 

Renly looked shocked by the care his brother displayed.

 

"I do." Ser Loras stood very tall.

 

" _ Good _ ." Robert paused, then sighed and winced and looked around. "No Lancel in sight, either. Most useless squire I've ever had."

 

"I could help, my King?" A wiry young man with dark brown hair and large dark eyes offered from where he had already silently moved forward and managed to remove the rest of Lord Renly's plate without disturbing where the maester was stitching up his back.

 

"You're one of Ser Davos' lads, right?"

 

"Yes, sir."

 

"Then your King would appreciate it."

 

Ned rose to his feet.

 

"I'll help. That lad'll never get you to your feet."

 

"I can get to my own damned feet, Ned."

 

Jon grinned and took another pull of the bottle before handing it to Ser Loras and nodding at Renly. The younger Baratheon took the bottle with a shaking hand from the pain and took a long pull from it, and then it made its way back to the King's hand. Ned had meanwhile pulled the King back to his feet and was helping Ser Davos' son in divesting the King of his armor. Jon rose and stuck his head out of the tent and told one of the Vale knights who'd come as his escort to send for clothing and the King's crown from where it stood under guard, as well as a wash basin and warm water. Robert had acted the King a few moments before, he'd best emerge back where the people could see him looking like one as well.

 

"I can't believe those fuckers, Ned." King Robert went on, his tone frustrated. "I take the field and they either throw themselves at my damned feet, or they're milling around trying to turn my melee into some kind of fucking  _ bloodbath _ . I won't tolerate assassination. I don't care what it is; poison's a cowards way out, but so is hiring someone else to do your dirty work!"

 

Jon said nothing about the many assassins that Robert had sent after the two Targaryens, Daenerys and Viserys. One was most certainly dead. The other was likely dead. There was no sense in bringing that up at the moment when Robert was actually doing well. Besides, seeing that he couldn't just take the field might open the King's eyes somewhat.

 

"What's the world come to, Ned, when I can't even have an honest fight?" Robert asked, and a hint of his earlier, distraught reaction to the Queen's miscarriage came through.

 

That was a  _ tragedy _ . They'd lost the one thing that the Crown needed more than anything else. Jon knew he had to find a way to speak to the Grand Maester at the first opportunity, and he needed to do it in Lord Tywin's presence. The man was of no help. He needed to be discredited and they needed to bring in someone who was an expert. The Queen's womb had shown it could conceive; if something was affecting her ability to hold the child, then they would have to do whatever they could to mitigate that.

 

At that moment, though, Jon didn't want to think of it. Ned had participated in a tourney. The boy he'd all but raised, who would never take knightly vows but was the truest knight that Jon had ever known, had joined in the melee. Were it not for the fact that he'd taken a knee before Robert  _ (something that didn't annoy the King simply because Ned had been refusing to do more than lightly spar with his friend since they were boys)  _ he might have even won the damned thing.

 

Jon's worry as soon as he'd seen that the Viper's having taken the field was going to pique Robert's pride enough for him to do something so incautious had left his heart in his throat. If the Queen had any desire to see her husband dead, now would be the easiest time. Jon had almost called for his own armor, old as he was, and then Ned had stepped forward.

 

Jon smiled at the memory of the fight. It was hard to keep sight of everyone in the mass of fighting men, but he'd managed. Ned had watched not only his King's back, but he'd even managed to watch the Viper's. No easy task when the man had as many enemies as he did. In the end, no great disaster befell them. Robert was infuriated that many young warriors had visibly chosen to lose to their King. Ned had proven himself to all and sundry in the South as a man to be reckoned with on the field. Even the Red Viper's fearsome reputation had gained more scope, for the man had fought like five men.

 

"Politics. The world has come to  _ politics _ ." Ned answered Robert's question after a long pause, pulling a face and taking the wine and then passing it back while Robert scoffed.

 

"Well… let the talkers and the bootlickers see how we handle politics, then." Robert finally chuckled, then asked. "I don't suppose you know why that Dornish snake chose to join the melee at the last moment? And where was the Princess Lyarra? I didn't see her in the stands. I would have had her see me fight."

 

Jon resisted the urge to pull a face as Ned's easy expression shuttered somewhat.

 

"Amory Lorch showed up and Prince Oberyn became aware he was to be in the melee."

 

" _ Fuck it all, _ he did?" Robert's expression turned dark. "I  _ told _ Lord Tywin I didn't want any of his men from the Sack here buggering things up!"

 

" _ What _ ?"

 

Jon asked at the same time Ned and the two others present in the tent did. Ser Loras, Lord Renly, Lord Stark, and the Hand of the King took a moment to take in the fact that they'd all had the same surprised thought at the same time. Jon Arryn doubted it would be a syncopation ever repeated.

 

"You said that the negotiations were important, Jon, and back then we didn't realize that the Dornish had it in them to be decent and send so much of that food reserve North." Robert replied, apparently finding nothing odd about the question as he drained his bottle and explained. "If it was important, obviously we didn't want anyone here who'd fuck it up, and I didn't want my tourney turned into a bloodbath. Not that I don't see how it could happen, but I  _ specifically _ told Lord Tywin not to have any of his men who were involved in that mess here."

 

"That was a wise course." Jon didn't know what surprised him more: that Robert had taken that initiative or that Lord Tywin had apparently not complied. "Shall you speak to Lord Tywin of it, Your Grace, or-?"

 

"You can do it, I'm too damned tired, Jon." The King lurched back to his feet and turned, walking over towards where his brother was being assisted in carefully lowering himself stomach first onto a cot. "You're alright, Renly?"

 

"The tingling's gone and my legs feel normal again." Lord Renly allowed. "Thank you for your concern, Your Grace."

 

"Yeah, well, we're  _ Baratheons _ . There aren't enough of us left to forget that." The King blew out a deep breath, his face darkening. "I'm going to find out which one of those Tyroshi sellswords struck you in the back, and when I do, they'll be  _ lucky _ to face exile."

 

"I'll leave you to it, then." Lord Renly reached out and took his brother's hand. "I'm for home, I think. I'll recover better in Storm's End anyway."

 

"I can believe it. This is no place for anything good." The King allowed. "You won't be staying for the tourney finals, then, Ser Loras?"

 

The Knight shook his head, but Lord Renly cursed.

 

"No,  _ no _ , I won't have us leaving before then. I forgot. We'll leave tomorrow with the evening tide. Ser Davos sails at night fearlessly, we'll just set out then - wait, dammit, no… I sent Shireen off with Ser Davos already."

 

"You did?" The King frowned.

 

"Yes…" Lord Renly blinked and the Maester stepped forward.

 

"I've given Lord Renly syrup of poppy, Your Grace, and I believe it is taking effect. He should be allowed his rest."

 

"Yes." The King breathed out and looked up at the Knight of Flowers. "Your grandmother's got a wheelhouse, I'm sure."

 

"Yes, my King."

 

"Well, go speak to your family, then. I agree that Renly shouldn't linger here. Arrange to leave with her and your father after the joust, if they've no argument with it."

 

"I'll speak to my Lord Father and grandmother as soon as Renly's settled in our quarters."

 

"Good." The King nodded, then turned to Jon and Ned. "After someone gets off their ass and gets me my finery, we'll all go back to the Keep. I want to speak with the Lord Commander and see if he's found anything about whatever cur tried to poison your grandchild, Ned."

 

Ned's expression turned ice cold and Jon sighed as the good feelings that had pervaded the tent fled.

 

"I wish to speak to him as well, with your permission."

 

"Of course, Ned."

 

Jon took a moment and prayed to the Seven that, if nothing else, at least one good thing could come of the Queen's miscarriage. Perhaps she'd be too exhausted to plot. It was not likely, but Jon felt that if Ned could join a tourney, he could hope that Cersei Lannister would just take her medicine and sleep for the remainder of whatever time they were hosting the Dornish.

 

Well, that, and Jon also hoped that nobody started the rumor that the Red Viper was behind the Queen's miscarriage. Someone was bound to eventually notice that she lost her babe in the afternoon, and the attempt against the Princess Lyarra's child had been made in the morning. That was the very last rumor he needed spreading at this moment.

 

* * *

Oberyn's chest ached where he'd caught a kick from a Stormlander boy of maybe eight-and-ten who was built like a fucking boulder. Oberyn revisited his people's long-held belief that Marcher lads of any age were best left pincushioned with arrows or spears so they couldn't torment innocent Dornishmen out on missions of just vengeance. It was a sound belief.

 

Worse, to his mind, Oberyn's fury had finally burnt down to ashes. Trust a coward who murdered children to elude the field. His target had come onto the melee field because he couldn't avoid it with so many smallfolk eyes upon him, but as soon as the chaos broke out, he'd slipped away.

 

Oberyn had then spent the rest of the weapon-filled fracas simply doing what one had to do in a melee;  _ fighting _ . A situation made worse when he'd found that his uncle was right. Everyone on that field, with either a beef against him personally, a disdain for the Dornish, or a hope of gaining positive attention from his enemies by beating him, had fallen on him. Were it not for Ser Daemon and a couple of guards who'd participated, he would not have come out with nothing more than a cracked rib and some bad bruising to show for his decision to use the melee as grounds for his revenge.

 

He'd bathed and changed in his pavilion at the tourney grounds. It gave him a chance to look at his ribs, determine it was only cracked, and admire the bruising that covered most of his right side. It was not, he was relieved, even remotely serious enough to make him worry for Lyarra's pregnancy. It did, however, hurt and did nothing to improve his mood.

 

Part of him wished to be out searching for Lorch himself, but a small threat of good sense prevented it. First, all he'd likely to is stir up some fervor amongst the smallfolk. He didn't want to give the King an excuse to level a punishment against Dorne itself because of the Red Viper supposedly attempting to start a riot. If he started a riot, there would be no  _ supposing _ about it.

 

Second of all, Oberyn knew that the days of traveling quietly and unidentified were over. The smallfolk had learned his face in the days of the tourney. They would pay close attention now to any Dornishman they saw, and they would not keep his presence secret. Oh, they might  _ try _ , but the racing gossip would destroy that quickly.

 

_ Finally _ , Oberyn was tired and he was growing worried for Lyarra. Usually her end of the bond they shared was a pool of calm. She was not a high strung woman, for which he was grateful. He appreciated her passion, but he had enough impulsiveness and was inclined enough to raging emotions for both of them.

 

"She's in the bedchamber, Your Grace." Walda was the only one present when he gave up prowling the fair under the guise of selecting gifts for his daughters. She was sitting quietly, knitting by feel in the moonlight. "I'll leave you to your peace."

 

"My thanks." Oberyn entered his bedchamber in search of his wife.

 

He found her in bed, wearing a loose cotton shift and lying beneath a thin cotton blanket. He thought her asleep and settled on the bed to pull off his boots as carefully as he could not to wake her. He swiftly found out that he'd been mistaken when she immediately rose to her knees on the mattress.

 

"Darling-"

 

She slapped him full across the face.

 

"Do not  _ dare _ address me so!"

 

_ Ah… _

 

Oberyn wisely got to his feet, kicking the one boot he'd pulled off out of the way. Then he put his hands up in case another attack was on its way. It wasn't, but he watched in the light of the candle he'd brought in with him as his wife rose and scrambled off of the bed, standing to face him with her hands fisted at her sides.

 

"How dare you come here and act as if nothing is wrong!'

 

"As far as I know nothing is, or at least I thought so until you struck me." Oberyn replied, his own temper spiking. "Is the babe-?"

 

"Our child is fine, little that you care!'

 

Oberyn sucked in a breath, shocked and stung at the accusation.

 

"Lyarra, that is foolish. Our child-."

 

"If you  _ cared _ you would put the babe's safety before your own wants! Father told me of the melee! You went in alone until Ser Daemon and others followed you, and  _ even then  _ you were separated from others of your party. Father hates tourneys but he joined just to watch your back for the sake of our child, for my sake, and you-."

 

"And I wish justice for my sister and niece, do you call that wrong or petty, Lyarra?" Oberyn stepped forward, looming over her in anger. "Do not be childish."

 

"Do not dismiss my anger is  _ childish _ when you could have had justice more effectively with a bow and arrow from a hundred paces away!"

 

"You do not understand!" Oberyn's own voice lifted as he yelled back, raging over the fierce whispers she'd directed at him.

 

"Then  _ make me  _ understand!"

 

"How would you feel if it were Robb?" He asked, then shook his head. "No,  _ Sansa _ . That sweet sister of yours who is too filled to the brim with songs and stories to know what dangers life holds? Elia knew, but she - she had strength in her soul and in her heart, but none in her body. She could no more fight than I can fly, and that they took all of it away from her - her freedom, her wit, her humor, her hope… What would you  _ do _ , Lyarra? Would you not  _ rage _ , would you not want their blood on your hands if you came face to face with those who'd  _ raped _ and  _ murdered _ your sweet sister?"

 

Oberyn felt himself bare his teeth and shook his head.

 

"And her  _ children _ . You know not how she suffered to give that prophecy-obsessed idiot his precious children. Rhaenys nearly killed her just in carrying her! She was a stone lighter  _ after _ she went to childbed than before she wed! Then Aegon! She was bedridden for months afterward, suffering from blood lost as if by the bucket! She nursed her babes at her own breast, she loved those children as I love mine, and yet she had to watch her son's brains scattered on a wall by the same man who then took her sense of self from her even as he took her life!”

 

"You don't think I'm  _ not _ afraid of that?" Lyarra raged right back, the side of her fist thumping against his sternum and drawing a wince from him as it jarred his ribs. "You don't think I've learned  _ anything _ since leaving Winterfell? You think I haven't seen and felt your pain? You think I don't look at Gwyn and how she was torn apart and has to put herself back together and don't know that men can be evil? I know,  _ now _ more than  _ ever _ , and I am  _ afraid _ ! I have the right to be afraid, and why shouldn't I? You came and took me from my home-."

 

"We're Marked!" Oberyn threw up his hands in frustration. "I had no choice."

 

"Lady Olenna says that in Dorne Marked couples will live beside each other not as man and wife, but merely in companionship for  _ ages _ . That four-and-ten is as young as one can legally wed in your homeland, and it's more usual to wait until at least six-and-ten."

 

Oberyn froze and resisted the urge to begin cursing. The Faith of Seven usually held it was right to rush and wed as soon as Marks appeared no matter the ages involved. Apparently, things in the North were similar. In Dorne, however, they had found that conjugal closeness wasn't the only closeness that would suffice in keeping a pair of soulmates healthy.  _ Proximity _ was necessary, but you could take a young couple and merely place them together to live under supervision rather than as man and wife, and it was frequently enough done that way.

 

"It was political, wasn't it?" Lyarra demanded, her gray eyes angry violet shadows in the dark. "You had to come and  _ claim me _ not because you wanted a wife so young, or because we  _ needed _ to be wed, but because you wanted an alliance with the North to worry the Lannisters and the Crown."

 

"Yes." Oberyn had no intention of lying to her. "We might have had a betrothal, and you come to Dorne, but it would have put us both at risk. There would have been a longer period of vulnerability, and it would have added years to the point where our lives depend on each other. That time is most definitely fixed to consummation, Lyarra, and I have many enemies. It was safest for  _ you _ if we wed quickly and you fell with child with haste. It means you will spend less time vulnerable to my own death."

 

"So much for love."

 

Oberyn finally realized what the sick feeling beneath the anger filling the air was and his temper imploded as he lashed himself for his stupidity. Lyarra's self-confidence, her certainty in  _ her own _ worth and her ability to deserve love, had never been built up by years of a warm family. Because, no matter how they loved her, nothing her siblings or father could do changed the fact that she was a bastard; hidden away from visiting bannermen, denied a name, motherless, and  _ hated _ by her father's lady wife. As they stood there and fought, his wife's faith in his feelings for her shattered and now lay about their feet on the floor as she stepped away, back against the wall with her arms around herself, and the tender strings that bound their soul tugged and thinned further in her self-recrimination.

 

"Oh, Lyarra, darling,  _ no… _ "

 

"Don't touch me."

 

"As you wish." Oberyn held his hands up and instead leaned against the wall as close as he could while respecting her demand. "I will not. May I be close to you, Lyarra?"

 

She huffed out a breath, fighting against tears and he cursed silently. He'd rather face a basilisk, he'd rather go barehanded to face a charging bull, he'd rather wrestle a lizard lion, than face the honest tears of a woman. It was one thing when they were feigned, or a weakness, but knowing that he'd taken this strong, vibrant woman with whom he'd only just admitted to falling in love and reduced her to tears…

 

"I'm an ass." Oberyn admitted in a wry, quiet tone. "I am violent, and I am fickle. I am not a good man."

 

Lyarra gasped again and he slowly settled his hands near her shoulders.

 

"May I touch you?"

 

She nodded.

 

"Lyarra, I have as many faults as I claim to have talents, and maybe more still, but I am  _ not _ a liar. Believe me when I say that you hold my heart."

 

Oberyn winced as she flinched when he reached out, trying to tuck a curl that had pulled out of the loose sleeping braid she wore back behind her ear. Bracing himself for another blow if she didn't credit his words, he carefully began to gather her into his arms. She didn't hit him again, but the tight way she curled into herself, tucking her face away from him as a sob tore through her body was far worse. He'd rather she slapped him again.

 

"Lyarra _ , I love you _ ." He kissed the rumpled curls that crowned her head, so thick they arched over her head cowl-like. "I love you  _ truly _ and  _ dearly _ . I've known the headlessness of spring and the heat of summer, and I've been held in the autumn of my life by a love who knew me like no other ever will… but you are the warm hearth in the winter of my life. You are unlooked for and unasked for, but an oasis to me."

 

"Then why won't you  _ listen _ ?" She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears and her lips bitten red trying to hold them back.

 

"I'm a loud soul, Lyarra, and I let my storms drown out your song. Forgive me?"

 

His heart hurt a little when she shook her head.

 

"If-If," She sniffled and buried her face in his tunic. "If it were just  _ me _ , I could fight and then we could fight and - and I  _ could _ forgive. It's easy to forgive, to move on, and love you… Oberyn, how can I  _ trust _ you if you ignore me? How can I trust you if I can't depend on you to put something as precious as our child before everything else? Even Lady Stark, who hates me, abandoned that in a trice for Sansa's sake. For her child she'd throw away her fondest dream of advancement, just on the word of a bastard she loathes."

 

"You mean getting Sansa a queen's crown?"

 

"Aye."

 

Oberyn gave her words the thought they deserved and came out of it feeling stupidly young and foolish.

 

"I do not believe I can lose."

 

" _ Everyone _ can lose. Look at my Uncle Brandon. He was held to be the best sword in the North, but did that help him fight a king's madness? Did it help him fight fire? Everyone can lose. There is  _ always _ a way you can fail, Oberyn."

 

"As Doran is constantly telling me." Oberyn admitted, his heart unclenching a little as she relaxed into his chest slightly and allowed him to rub a hand up and down her back.

 

"Listen to your brother."

 

"And my wife?"

 

"Just - just…"

 

"Kill him wisely, then, with men at my back and not in the middle of a giant mock battle."

 

Lyarra sniffled, loudly and didn't deign to answer. She didn't feel as angry with him, however, and he gently nudged her back towards the bed. She allowed it.

 

"Lyarra, you're sure the babe-?"

 

"Is fine, but…"

 

"But?" He asked, his heart in my throat.

 

"I got so upset I couldn't keep anything down." She replied sullenly, and Oberyn suddenly realized she might be leaning against him less in acceptance of his presence and more because she was lightheaded after her explosion of anger. "Gwyn went to get something else, but she isn't using the castle larder anymore, so it will take a while."

 

" _ Ah _ ." Oberyn gently nudged her onto the bed, feeling very much like something that should crawl about on its belly rather than walk like a man. He knelt, ignoring the pain in his ribs to kiss the barely-there curve of her belly as he did so. "I will make you a tisane, then. From my own stores, to settle your stomach. As it is my fault for distressing you both."

 

It was only when she didn't answer that he realized his wife had already fallen asleep. Sitting there on the floor, wearing one boot, Oberyn Martell rested his head on the side of the bed. Several days later a raven arrived in Sunspear bearing Prince Oberyn's seal and addressed to his brother, the Prince. It bore only three words.

 

_ Marriage is difficult. _

 

Exhausted as he was in ruling from Sunspear with no access to the mineral springs that relieved him so and without his brother to help him, Prince Doran's laughter could be clearly heard outside the door to his solar.

 

* * *

"Randyll Tarly is a  _ ghoul _ ." Tyrion muttered under his breath as he walked through the dark corridors of the Red Keep in the wee hours of the night.

 

He'd come upon the man in the ravenry, chuckling over a letter he'd received from his son and Heir. The man planned to send the boy North so that Ned Stark could beat him into another savage like his father, and if that failed, Tarly was counting on Winter to finish the boy off. He was actually enjoying his only living son's fear of the journey.

 

Tyrion took a moment to send a quick helpful thought to whoever Samwell Tarly was. As one unwanted son to another, you understand. He fancied sending a raven as well, expressing his condolences for having a dick for a father, rather than merely a father who'd had a dick and used it once to engender him. Then he brushed the thought off and concentrated on his own problems.

 

The first problem was the fact that Cersei was likely to descend upon him like a shrieking harpy at any moment and try and claw his eyes out. One could trust his sister to say the worst and most damaging thing politically out of spite, he'd found, if she thought that it would in any way help her harm someone she hated. It just so happened that Cersei, for some damned reason, managed to honestly hate the Princess Lyarra.

 

Tyrion wasn't sure why, either. Oh, there was no doubt that Robert's drooling over the girl was embarrassing, but he drooled over women other than Cersei often enough. Likewise, Lyarra was  _ Marked _ ; there was no way any man but Prince Oberyn was ever going to touch her consensually, so why worry? There was no sense to it, but since when did that stop his dear sister?

 

What really concerned him were all the reasons not to. Even Cersei, as much as she disdained the North, had been ready to push for a betrothal between Lord Stark's daughter, Sansa, and Joffrey. It was a political necessity to tie the North back into the original alliance now that Eddard Stark was bound to Dorne through the Marked marriage of Prince Oberyn and Lyarra. Cersei herself had said nothing kind about the idea of getting a Northern chit as a gooddaughter, but she'd agreed it was necessary and originally been prepared to encourage it.

 

Likewise, the Dornish needed to be  _ cultivated _ . First, they had never been able to easily get spies into Dorne. It was a tightly knit culture that was happy enough to maul itself to pieces with infighting, but if an outside force stood against them, the Dornish united. As such, if they wanted to keep an eye on the Dornish, they needed to move closer to them than they had since the Rebellion.

 

Then there was the upcoming Winter. Before learning of the bride price that the Martell/Stark marriage had involved, there had always been the hope of getting cheap food from Dorne. That would have been a huge help to King's Landing itself and even the Westerlands. Tyrion was getting nervous about his father's preoccupation with the Crown and its debts; they needed to start buying in food so they could subsidize the cost with the peasantry. If not, there were going to be problems.

 

All of this was an excellent reason for Cersei to swallow her spleen and actually act like a Queen. Tyrion didn't know what to blame her inability to do this on. Three years before she'd been able to do so. Was it Myrcella and Tommen dying that had left her skin so thin and her temper so close to the surface? She wasn't even plotting the way she once had, instead Cersei was just acting out.

 

Tyrion found himself wishing that Jaime hadn't been run out of the Keep that morning to hunt brigands again. He wanted to talk to his brother. On one hand, he simply wished for a friendly face and some insight into Cersei's character; not that Jaime'd ever been anything but blind to what his twin was really like. Still, Tyrion would take what information he could get.

 

_ He'd probably just be angry at me anyway. _

 

Tyrion's thoughts grew as dark as the hallway as he continued to walk along. Cersei had been put on bed rest, and from her bed she'd begun to tell her maids that she was certain someone had acted to harm her unborn child. She'd started with suggesting it was the same person who'd attempted to harm the Princess, then moved on to suggesting it was a reprisal. Seeing the chaos this could cause when Bronn told him about it after having gone to have his usual tryst with Cersei's least favorite handmaiden, Tyrion had gone to head it off.

 

His sister was not likely to shy away from revenge for that. He'd gone to his father and the King when they were speaking to Jon Arryn about Cersei's current situation. He'd told them that Jaime had procured a midwife for Cersei the night before, and that even if Cersei hadn't realized she was miscarrying when she went to the tourney, she'd certainly begun to have symptoms.

 

Little as Tyrion could stand Cersei he'd gotten a kind of pleasure from letting the King know that his attentions had left his Queen bleeding. Robert Baratheon had looked stricken at the idea that forcing himself on Cersei might have caused the miscarriage. Tyrion could even appreciate having made Tywin quite furious, but that had followed with his father's anger at not having been told immediately.

 

_ At least she'll get a competent midwife now, though we'll have to find the one Jaime had treating her if possible to get a statement _ . Tyrion reflected, rubbing a hand over his face as he thought to himself.  _ Father is taking care of it, and he's going to give Grand Maester Pycelle seven kinds of hell for not noticing any signs that might have showed up. Mayhaps we'll be lucky enough not to lose another, potentially sane, alternative to Joffrey. _

 

Still… something about all of it  _ bothered _ Tyrion. More than usual, anyway. He didn't like to think of the reality of Cersei and Jaime's relationship. Jaime had always been too good for her, and then there was the reality of cuckolding the King.

 

_ Not _ , Tyrion noted to himself,  _ that Jaime had had a chance to do that recently _ . His brother had even complained about it to him, twice, before Tyrion had gotten it through to Jaime he never wanted to hear such words again. The man had taken a vow of chastity, hadn't he? Why should he complain because for the last year and change he'd barely gotten a chance to occupy Cersei's bed because her husband had been in it? Even Tyrion didn't have that kind of gall, and he prided himself on being shameless.

 

At least he had, once. Staring out a skycell at your own mortality changed a person. Fighting a starving shadowcat made one question one's life decisions. Facing off against a madwoman left a person with a certain introspection.

 

Tyrion had spent his time in the Vale thinking about what he wanted. It didn't make him happy, given he was unlikely to get any of it, but he'd left a little less eager to drown himself in wine and whores and a little more eager to achieve… something before he died. He even had a list. It was almost embarrassingly short.

 

He wanted to be Lord of the Rock.

 

He want to hear his father tell him that he'd done a job well. Lord Tywin didn't have to be proud of him, he could just acknowledge Tywin's talents.

 

He didn't want to die alone.

 

The last was the most painful. Tyrion had already been bitten once by the cruel beast that was love. He'd seen how greed tainted it. He'd just grown up to be… a little more pragmatic. He didn't have to be loved madly and deeply by a wife, but a wife was something he found he wanted. Company, a companion who was pleasant and who would get on with him would be enough. If he somehow generated more luck than the Gods had ever given him, perhaps love could grow later. He'd take pleasant amiability and fondness if he could get it.

 

As if conjured by his thoughts, Tyrion rounded the corner and came upon the person who could provide him with at least two of the things on his list. He paused silently in the dark to watch as the girl stood on the stairs. She was looking down, and apparently watching someone go in the opposite direction, and he listened to the heavy tread of a large man's footsteps departing with something like dread.

 

"Am I to take it then that my suit is perhaps useless for reasons other than my own charming self, Lady Gwyn?"

 

The words popped out of his mouth before he could stop them and Tyrion cursed his own sharp tongue. Under normal circumstances, he was quite pleased with how he used it. It had done well by him in all sorts of situations. Unfortunately at that moment, exhausted and frustrated by his life and family, it decided to chase after Jaime's bad habits.

 

The girl was nearly unidentifiable if you didn't know how to sort appearance away from false identity. Her pale brows had been darkened with kohl. Smudges of dirt on her face and poor clothing worn in shape-disguising layers as the lower servants wore all contributed to the unbleached and stained linen wrapped around her head to hide the golden hair that was her most obvious feature. Her blue eyes, however, were like lapis in the dark as they widened in the light of the moon that was pouring through the thin window that lit this stretch of forgotten hallway.

 

"Lord Tyrion." She dropped into a graceful curtsy, her manners present even as she surprised him.

 

The eyes she turned on him were cautious, but they weren't terrified. Moreover, she wasn't polite and careful at all. There was none of the demure girl he'd seen before in the child now looking him square in the face as she rose back to her full height.

 

"Lady Gwyn, forgive me for startling you." Tyrion decided to brazen it out. "I won't shame you if you've a beau, you know? I just would like to know where I stand."

 

"It was just a guard you saw. I am not supposed to wander alone." She watched him for a moment. "Do you know  _ why _ Lord Stark took me on as a fosterling in the middle of the Plague?"

 

"I do." Tyrion winced.

 

People said that the Northern lord was heartless, but he supposed that Lady Gwyn was proof he was not. Surrounded by knights, Tyrion reflected grimly, and it had taken a Northern savage to save her. Had his father not already replaced any hope of a Lannister reputation for chivalry with one for bloody and brutal victory, the Lady Gwyn's story would certainly suffice to do so. If she’d told the Dornish he wondered why it was not making the rounds in court gossip, however?

 

"Then you know that Casterly Rock has no appeal to me, and the Westerlands are  _ not _ home."

 

"We could redecorate?" Tyrion offered and when she gave him a look he felt his own lips turn up in a smile that was at least a little bloodthirsty. "For one, we could remove those…  _ items _ that cause you distress. I speak with honesty when I say that I hold no fondness for them, and if it's a choice between a legitimate grandson and those  _ items _ , my father will find their usefulness utterly reduced."

 

She stared at him for a long moment, as if trying to work out some secret he held, and Tyrion decided to try again. She wasn't, after all, looking at him in disgust. She wasn't even looking at him as though he was some lesser thing she didn't understand. Tyrion was being looked at as someone looked at a man who wasn't trusted, and being looked at as a man at all and half of nothing was something he appreciated. It made him recall the girl slipping him baked goods and being unafraid of him as a child of eight.

 

"Lady Gwyn," Tyrion licked his lips and thought of what to say. "I know my family has wronged yours, and that is twice a wrong for you are our kin. Likewise, I know that for a girl perched on the edge of great beauty I must seem a horror, but I think you know the truth of _real_ _monsters_ and the faces they can wear… I am malformed, scarred, and small, but... abed, when the candles are blown out, I am made no worse than other men."

 

She didn't flee from him, but instead stood, listening and so Tyrion went on.

 

"In the dark, I am the Knight of Flowers. I am generous. Loyal to those who are loyal to me. I've proven I'm no craven. And I am cleverer than most, surely wits count for something. I can even be kind.  _ Kindness _ is not a habit with us Lannisters, I fear, but I know I have some somewhere. I could be... I could be good to you."

 

The silence in the hallway stretched out with those huge dark blue eyes fixed on him. Somewhere along the line, they became slightly sad. Tyrion wasn't sure what to think, and a part of him bristled at what he took to be pity before the girl spoke again, her voice low and soft.

 

"I'm more Lannister than not, though I spent long in denying it, Lord Tyrion." Lady Gwyn spoke in the measured tone of one considering every word and plucking them from the far corners of their self to assemble into an identity another could see. "I am not kind by nature, though I have found kindness for those I love. I am the most loyal soul alive, if I've reason to be. I have been broken inside, and so I cannot blame you for how the Gods made you on the outside of your skin. We all wear the clothes the Gods gave us on our soul, no matter which set of Gods you pray to."

 

A tiny seed of hope germinated inside him.

 

" _ But _ ?"

 

"But I have others who I love who need me."

 

"And if they did not?"

 

"There are rumors about you in the Rock amongst the servants."

 

That made Tyrion frown and the tiny seedling began to wither.

 

"I've ever treated our servants well. Being little myself, I try not to step on those who hold me up."

 

"Yes, it's why I've never known what to make of the rumors. You were kind to me, once, when I was a girl and before you all forgot me."

 

Tyrion bowed his head to acknowledge that truth. Losing track of their least important fosterling during the royal visit had been a mistake. Looking at the calm, poised girl who stood before him wearing a face so like Cersei's and eyes like a still day at sea made him wonder what that mistake might cost them. No girl of three-and-ten should have such poise when encountering something like  _ him _ in a darkened hallway with no guard, or at least just abandoned by one.

 

"Will you tell me what these rumors besmirching my name are? I know they're not of wine or whores, as you're familiar with those."

 

"Not vices I approve of, but such doesn't scare me, no."

 

"Then what?"

 

For the first time she looked slightly afraid, but seemed to rally, meeting his eyes.

 

"They say you had a peasant girl on the side, and when you grew tired of her you let the guards make sport of her, and then sold her into slavery."

 

All the breath left Tyrion's body. He felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He nearly had to lean against the wall and locked his knees to hold himself upright out of sheer pride.

 

"An ugly story."

 

"The Rock produces few pretty tales these days."

 

"True." Tyrion swallowed and watched her watch him in terrible pained silence. He could almost hear Tysha's grief-stricken and pained wailing… When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. "If I were to tell you it was true, but that it was not I who threw her to the guards, what would you say?"

 

She bit her lip, and Tyrion could see the thoughts racing behind her eyes. They were surprisingly orderly. Over his pain and the wailing of his life's worst memories, he almost heard an abacus clicking.

 

"It would have to be your father, then. Lord Kevan wouldn't do it. Lady Genna wouldn't do it. Queen Cersei wasn't there at the time. No-one but your family would have such authority."

 

"Yes." He rasped, and felt oddly lighter… she had said it was his father's fault and paid him no measure of the blame… not that Tyrion held himself blameless.

 

He could have said no. He could have refused. He'd been so angry and hurt that his wife, the woman he  _ loved _ had just been one more person seeking to use him.

 

"...  _ Why _ ?" The girl looked at him, puzzled. "Everyone knows Lord Tywin hates you far more than you deserve, Lord Tyrion, but why punish a girl for seeking a better life in your bed? He could have just sent her away."

 

_ Because I wed her and shamed the family. _

 

Tyrion knew better than to say it.

 

"Isn't hate enough?" He asked, but his gut was twisting with another reality sinking in. "Slavery, you say - you say she was  _ sold _ ?'

 

"According to the woodcutter, Garric, she was and he claimed to be her father's cousin."

 

"Given Father's opinion of such things, I'm surprised even a woodcutter employed at the Rock would admit to being related to a whore." Tyrion pushed out a bitter laugh, suddenly desperate for a bottle or four of wine and to be gone from the girl's fresh face and old eyes. There was no hope here.

 

"What?" Now she was frowning at him, shaking her head. "Lord Tyrion, Garrick claims that his cousin was just a crofter's daughter. She was attempting to walk from her father's farm to his house when she beset by bandits and your brother saved her. He's the one who told everyone you put her in a cottage by the sea."

 

" _ No _ ." Tyrion shook his head bitterly. "You haven't heard all of the tale. My brother  _ paid _ her so that I might lose my virginity, nothing more."

 

"Was she a virgin?"

 

"Yes, why?"

 

"Who hires a virgin to take the virginity of another?" The Lady Gwyn frowned.

 

"A celibate Kingsguard, I'd imagine."

 

The words tripped easily off of his tongue, a jape that did nothing to pound the sudden wild lurching of his heart. Tyrion paused and stared at her, wondering when they'd both lost control of this conversation. Probably the moment they'd started being honest. Tyrion decided then and there that random moments of honesty were likely nothing good for a Lannister to indulge in.

 

"My Lady… I think you should go."

 

She paused, looked around the hallway and then nodded. The strange look on her face, trapped between sympathy and the curiosity of someone who hated not knowing, vanished. It was replaced by the blank, tired look of a servant and she dropped her shoulders and adopted the stooped posture of the eternally overworked. Tyrion would have been impressed if her words weren't acting like some wild animal, chewing away at the corners of his mind. Still, just at the edge of the light cast by the window, as a creature of shadow, she turned her face towards him and it was all that was lit by the moonlight, turning her honey-tan into a soft, glowing gold.

 

"Lord Tyrion… I've nothing  _ personal _ against you, though I trust you not at all… may I say one more thing?"

 

He gestured, having trouble breathing, let alone saying anything else.

 

" _ Someone _ here is lying. For once it is not me… and I don't even believe it is you." She bit her lip. "I hope that, if you find out, it makes things better for you, and not worse."

 

And then she was gone and Tyrion was left standing in the hallway with his ghosts.

  
  
  



	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tourney reaches its end. Lord Gargalen and Lord Jon Arryn have a not-so-nice chat. Cersei is herself. Bran dreams of what was but isn't and has a talk with someone who shouldn't be.

**Chapter Twenty-Eight – 297 A.C.**

 

Ser Domeric Bolton blew his nose noisily into the handkerchief proffered to him by a small, slightly dirty hand. He gritted his teeth in annoyance when he saw the mucus was laced with blood, and went over to the collapsible trestle table in his spare pavilion to wash his face again. He wasn't going to show up to a joust looking like he had just walked out of some barroom brawl. House Bolton's reputation, both the dire past and a future he hoped to see brighten, sat on his shoulders. Maintaining a positive image was a part of improving that reputation.

 

"I hope the other guy looks worse."

 

"Lady Arya, the other guy's looks are the  _ least _ of his concerns right now." Domeric huffed in return, looking at the girl who was currently sitting on the other side of the table, the head of her gray direwolf resting in her lap. He mustered up a grin. "Just because I'm a pleasant Bolton doesn't mean I'm not a Bolton."

 

Arya perked up and he found his lips twitching.

 

"I did  _ not _ , however, flay anyone."

 

Arya Stark appeared to consider whether she found that a relief or a disappointment. Domeric decided to move on before he found out which. Turning, he glanced to a hanging bronze mirror and was pleased to see his face clean and his nose no longer bleeding or bearing signs of having done so. Nothing could be done about the black eye, but at least it was merely showing discoloration and not swelling. The split lip was more annoying, but it wasn't that bad.

 

"If you were brawling, father will not be happy. It would look bad for the North, you know."

 

"You needn't pry the tale out of me, my Lady, I'm happy to tell it." Domeric felt himself smile a little, careful of his lip, as he turned and resumed his seat on the single chair in his simple canvas tent.

 

His servants were currently elsewhere, and his guards posted outside. He wanted no more problems with the three Westerlands guards he'd come upon the night before. The trouble he'd found had been more than enough to satisfy him.

 

"Then tell me!"

 

"I came across three redcloaks beating a… lady of the evening-."

 

"A whore."

 

"Yes," Domeric sighed, both disappointed and a little relieved Arya wasn't the little sister she often acted like. He'd always been sad to be an only child, but Arya was a handful and then some. "Just so. Either way, the red cloaks were tormenting the woman and I took vows before the Old Gods not to tolerate that."

 

"So, you beat them up?"

 

"Myself and Ser Ulwyck, whom I now owe a barrel of wine." Domeric agreed. "They were armed, but wore no plate and were not eager to cause an incident. They left after only a minor fight, thankfully, though the stubborn one is now lighter by two fingers."

 

"You cut off his fingers?" Arya gawked.

 

"I gave him fair warning to remove his hand from my person, then I hit him with my sword. The lost fingers were less a goal than a simple byproduct of using my sword. Recall that when you hit people with one, they usually bleed."

 

"If you do it right, anyway."

 

"Not necessarily." Domeric replied. "A man being bloody doesn't stop him from killing you. The end result of conflict should never be pain for pain's sake, Arya. That gets nothing done and it leaves others resenting you. Armed conflict exists to solve irreconcilable problems. If it's causing  _ more _ problems, you're doing it wrong."

 

Arya Stark considered that and nodded.

 

"If you won without much of a fight, what happened to your face?"

 

Domeric sighed and contented himself with the knowledge that he had a good jape well set up and a story to laugh over for years to come. Then, having done so, he just told the truth.

 

"The woman was terrified and when she was running away she opened a door to my face."

 

Arya hooted with laughter and her direwolf let out an amused yip before walking over and brushing against the armor covering Domeric's lower legs. He accepted the bare touch as an unusually generous greeting, and didn't reach down to bother the direwolf. The Starks' creatures were not hounds and did not like to be treated as such. A wise person paid attention to the dislikes of a beast that, not even half-grown, was larger than some men.

 

"Keep it." Arya responded when he offered her back her handkerchief and it was his turn to grin.

 

"May I count this as your favor then, in the upcoming tourney?" Domeric teased. "Mayhaps Lord Stark would even let me live, should I crown his daughter as Queen of Love and Beauty."

 

"I would sooner you give me the lance and let me ride the lists myself!"

 

"That would have to be Prince Oberyn's decision, and I imagine he would demand you wait until you're older."

 

Domeric stood up to move about in his armor, checking its fit for comfort again. The sun was risen, but not far and the first rounds of the joust would wait for the King and the crowd to settle in. He had some time yet, which was why he had not protested when the girl invaded his pavilion with Ser Dameon following her, looking slightly frazzled at having been entrusted with not only the girl's safety, but simply keeping up with her. Arya Underfoot was a good name for the youngest Stark girl, thought Domeric thought of it with fondness after having known her for a moon.

 

"If you win the crown, you should keep it for Sansa. She'd like a crown."

 

"I would be honored to crown your lady sister, but it would be crass of me not to offer it to some lady at the tourney." Domeric shrugged. "Holding onto one is simply not done."

 

"You could be the first?"

 

"Not the impression I'm seeking to make."

 

"Hmph."

 

Domeric got up and began to belt on his sword. His cloak he left off entirely. He did not need it in this heat, and he didn't want the encumbrance. Ser Loras could keep his cloak of flowers and his perfect presentation. Domeric wanted to win.

 

"You could give it to Lyarra?"

 

"I think the North has seen enough of men crowning other men's wives or betrothed for at least a few more generations."

 

"Oh… you're probably right." Arya agreed after a moment, her tone going from somber to curious. "Do you always think before you do or say anything, Ser Domeric? Father called you careful earlier. I think he meant it as a compliment, though, because he called Ob-Prince Oberyn reckless and foolhardy."

 

"He called him a few other things, too."

 

"Can I repeat them?"

 

"I think it would be best if you did not, Lady Arya." Domeric chuckled as he checked how his knives lay and found them comfortable. Balancing one's knives and positioning them in full plate was something of an art. Given his father preferred boiled leathers and mail, Domeric was rather proud of that being his addition to the family tradition of being well-armed at all times with sharp things.

 

" _ Fine _ ." She huffed. "You didn't answer my question."

 

"That's because I'm still thinking of how to answer it."

 

"So you are careful."

 

Domeric offered her a small smile and cracked his neck. She narrowed her eyes. He waited her out, sure she could work out the answer without him laying it out as if he were spelling words with a child's wooden blocks. She nodded after a moment and he decided to ask his own question.

 

"How are things with the Princess and Prince Oberyn?"

 

"She's still mad at him, but she tended his ribs last night and sang for him when… um."

 

"His men came back from searching for Amory Lorch with no news for him." Domeric filled in and watched her eyes widen, than narrow. Patiently, he waited for her to work it out. It didn't take long.

 

"You were out looking too!" Arya sat up, surprised. "Father sent men out looking?"

 

"Yes, as did Lord Tywin and the King." Domeric agreed and paused. "Do you know why?"

 

"Yes."

 

She agreed, but offered no more explanation. Domeric was pleased to see she knew the meaning of circumspection, even if she didn't often add to it. He didn't need to get into the politics with the little girl, he was confident her father and Prince Oberyn would handle that. It was enough to know that she was aware of it. His father would ask, and he could tell him that the next generation of Starks were no fools, even the younger members. Combined with Lord Stark's decision to fortify the Neck and rebuild Moat Cailin, Domeric knew the information would please Lord Bolton. His father valued the independence and prosperity of the North in general and their own lands in particular. Knowing that they would be ready when the house of cards the Southrons had constructed in King's Landing started to fall would ease many minds.

 

"So, Lady Arya, I'm to take it that under no circumstances should I offer you a crown of red roses?"

 

"Not if you want to keep your fingers."

 

"Then I shall have to keep your handkerchief to dry the tears of my broken heart."

 

The girl blushed and glared at him before pronouncing her opinion of his jape with utter firmness.

 

"Ser Domeric, ew!"

 

He was still laughing when Lord Stark came in to soberly wish him luck on the field. With an exasperated but fond look, the man collected his daughter, declaring that Prince Oberyn should not have left her to the care of a busy knight, let alone a busy unwed knight with no chaperone present. Domeric allowed himself to look abashed at that, but then went about his preparations. 

The girl wasn't yet flowered and was a Northern lord's daughter besides. The idea that he couldn't be trusted with her was more than a little offensive, but Domeric it pass. He had a tourney and a bet to win.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn knew his apology of the night before had fallen short of full forgiveness when his wife saw the ugly bruising on his side and made no move to offer him assistance. Instead he was left to treat himself with Ser Daemon acting as his squire. Arya was angry with him as well, and ran off to follow Ser Domeric about with Daemon running after her at the last minute to serve as the girl's guard. Before she left Oberyn did take her aside to speak with her.

 

"If you want to talk to me about Nymeria, Father's already said she has to stay in the kennels." The young girl's long, pale face was tight with anger. "That's not fair! Nymeria's the one who found the nasty sod anyway!"

 

"If you're going to choose to curse the man, Arya, I ask that you use harsher language." Oberyn said wryly and shook his head, lowering himself into a chair in the solar and nodding to the footrest, tugging it closer to him with one ankle.

 

Arya perched on it reluctantly. Like a coiled spring she was ready to pop up at any moment. Oberyn couldn't blame her. He was itching underneath his skin to be out and searching for Amory Lorch, and instead he must play politics. Lord Gargalen had enjoyed one of those lovely conversations with the Hand where neither Oberyn's uncle nor the Hand of the King said anything, but where information was clearly conferred nonetheless.

 

It had been made clear that Rhaenys' murderer should not have been at the tourney or in the Crownlands at all, but that overt disruptions of the King's peace would not be tolerated. The inference was clear: if Oberyn was to kill him, the Usurper would not act. He had to do so quietly, however, and tearing apart the capitol to find the man was not quiet. He must act through others.

 

"You will be taking Nymeria with you to the fairgrounds. You are to be in control of her at all times, but I will not have you without that extra protection." Oberyn finished. "If you do not wish to go or feel you cannot control, you do not have to, but you are to have a guard with you as well as Nymeria at all times. If not, then you are to stay within guarded quarters. These may be those assigned to your father's party or mine own. Likewise, you are not to go alone to your dancing master any longer. If you do not have one of our guards here, you are to have one of your father's household."

 

"You're not angry at Nymeria."

 

"I am both grateful and I am vexed." Oberyn said after a moment, then explained. "Arya, your direwolf did me and mine a great service in finding the heartless miscreant swine who slaughtered my niece. What she also did, however, was give away any hint of surprise we might have had over the man. He now knows I look for him and that his life is forfeit. Craven as the filth is, Lorch will now seek to both hide and flee. That he hid under another House's colors before indicates that just my presence was enough to leave him cautious. If he goes into hiding altogether… it will make gaining justice that much more difficult."

 

Arya looked uncomfortable.

 

"I didn't even know she was going to do it, or how she knew. Do you know? Nymeria's never been near the man before!"

 

Oberyn sat back, frowning. Then he slowly shook his head. It was a question he would no more answer quickly than he would dismiss one of his daughters' own inquiries. The minds of children were open wide, like a window to a cool breeze, and he would not be the one to close Arya's shutters and lock her in the sweltering dark.

 

"Lady Arya, it is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don't want to be most of us and I do not wish for you to be just anyone. In all of the world I have seen one thing has proven true: no-one can understand everything, though trying to is a joy unto itself." Oberyn settled on saying. "I have seen your direwolves act as kind and loyal as a family's most trusted hound, but they are yet as wild as any beast in the woods. They are dangerous and they are fey and they are entirely too smart for any mere creature to be. So I would say that if anyone is to hold the answer to that question, it would likely be one who knows their companion better than I do."

 

"Old Nan told me that the Starks were magic once." Arya whispered back, leaning forward as if imparting a great secret eagerly. "Do you believe in magic?"

 

"Indeed, I have seen it."

 

Arya's face lit up, then closed off with caution as she took in his expression.

 

"You saw something bad."

 

"Yes," He answered, though it hadn't been a question, "And I've seen some small things that I cannot explain that might have been called good. The one thing I saw that was clearly beyond the realm of logic was not, however."

 

Arya shuffled in her seat, and for a moment she looked like she might argue or say something more. She did not, however, and Oberyn found he was too tired and irritable by half to press her any further. Instead he leaned forward and, on impulse, pressed a kiss to the hair atop her head as he would have with one of his own daughters.

 

"Ser Daemon is to participate in the joust today, as is Ser Deziel. Go down to the field with them if you would. Your sister and I shall be in the stands later."

 

Arya was off like a shot and he let out a sigh as he stood again. Lyarra was in the dressing room with Walda. Gwyn, who had been up late the night before securing food whose safety and provenance they could be sure of, would sleep in rather than attend the final day of the tourney. In deference to his ribs and his wife's temper, Oberyn would not joust. As such, he must go make himself presentable. At that moment, it was a task that pleased him not at all.

 

* * *

 

"I hope you weren't too greatly inconvenienced to miss the last day of the King's Tourney, Lord Gargalen."

 

"Not at all, Lord Hand. I find that, as diverting as such sport is, I am past the age where it occupies my attention as it once did."

 

Days of talk had, predictably, yielded nothing. Jon Arryn was growing irritated with the Dornish party, but he was growing far more annoyed with himself. He had known what a slim margin of success that existed for turning Ned's daughter's Mark into some benefit for the Crown. Still, Jon had hoped that it might be done. Prince Doran was a reasonable man, and a responsible ruler, and his actions during the Plague had shown a great capacity for goodness and humanity.

If only, Jon thought exhaustedly, Robert had just allowed the Mountain and Lorch to be brought to justice. Jon didn't even believe his foster son truly cared to protect them. Rather, somewhere during the King's original argument with Ned his stubbornness had been engaged. Mixed as it was with his obsessive hatred of the Targaryens, even after all these years he refused to be moved towards punishing the men for their actions.

 

Ten, even  _ five _ years ago, that hadn't mattered. Jon had not been pleased with the dishonor of it, but it was all part and parcel of taking a crown by force. Just as the alliance with Tywin had been necessary. Five years ago, however, Robert was still closer to the young warrior who had won over the kingdom with his battle prowess and jovial nature.

 

The Greyplague had put an end to that. His foster son had grown fat and disillusioned, drunk on spirits and his own power with little thought for governance. A problem had come that could destroy Robert's kingdom, one that battle alone wouldn't solve and Robert's giving heart had cried out for him to do something over. With no skills in such things, however, all of Robert's frantic attempts to make things better had made the plague worse for the Crownlands and elsewhere. The Faith had contributed to the horror with their attempts to repress the inoculation. Everything had worked against Jon's foster-son.

 

"I find that I am as well." Jon agreed quietly, though it was not quite true. He still enjoyed a tourney very well. Politics were what they were, however, and this meeting necessary. "I was wondering if we might revisit our discussion about the trade that currently exists between Dorne and the Crown."

 

Lord Gargalen raised neat dark gray eyebrows at him, the equal mix of white and black hairs within turning the arches over his eyes to the color of iron.

 

"I had believed that resolved some days ago, Lord Arryn. My understanding was that we would be discussing the matter of facilitating an iron shipment from the Stormlands to my nephew's realm. Though, I understand if such discussions cannot progress with Lord Renly injured as he is."

 

The Lord of the Eyrie expertly kept his face composed, but held in a grimace. Lord Gargalen and Prince Oberyn were well used to joint negotiations and were a good pair. The Lord of Salt Shore was impeccable polite and urbane, but also as patient as the granite of the mountains. He spoke in easy circles while Prince Oberyn grew artificially bored and jumped topics, derailing discussions, and though Lord Renly had progressed greatly as a good and responsible lord, he was still not Stannis.

 

The middle Baratheon brother had been able to doggedly follow a topic forever, but Lord Renly had all too happily jumped on the idea of a trade agreement for his own lands and monopolized the last two discussions. The Dornish had not objected. That left Jon to decide that a blunter approach was necessary.

 

"I'm afraid the matter of the iron shipment will have to be resolved privately by raven between Prince Doran and Lord Renly." Jon Arryn firmly held onto his own desires. "While I understand that a great deal of the unusually good crop yield Dorne had enjoyed this year and last will be heading North as part of the Bride Price for Princess Lyarra, I am sure some further agreement can be reached between the Crownlands and Dorne. Prince Doran is a cautious man.  _ Surely _ he has retained a large reserve for Dorne in the upcoming winter."

 

"I imagine he has. Mine nephew the Prince is ever cautious where his people's welfare is concerned."

 

"He is also generous where the good of all is involved." Jon countered, sitting back in his chair in a pose of comfort. "The end of the Plague rests almost solely on his shoulders thanks to his genius in spreading goatscale quickly amongst Dorne's herds, and then in transporting the infected goats."

 

Jon could see the intelligence of it. Goatscale did not spread quickly and easily, for all that it had been the habit of most herdsmen in Westeros to kill infected animals immediately to prevent its spread. It required close contact, and usually passed through shared feed or in animals closely penned, which was rare with goats. It was logical to assume that close contact could include sexual contact between goats, but Jon certainly had given it not thought in all of his desperation to acquire such animals. He quashed a sudden urge to make a jape about Prince Oberyn's lifestyle and habits influencing Prince Doran's logic and promised himself that he was going to get more sleep tonight before he said something stupid out of exhaustion and exasperation.

 

"Prince Doran merely wished what was best for the kingdom."

 

"As such, does it not concern him that the heart of Westeros, it's capital city, is in need of better food supplies?"

 

"I'm sure it is the concern of everyone in the Seven Kingdoms, Lord Arryn."

 

"Then some agreement  _ can _ be reached."

 

"As I have already said, Lord Arryn, some agreement can  _ always _ be reached. Unfortunately it will not be with Dorne." The slightly younger man held his ground, though his tone held just the right amount of polite regret. "Given the maesters' predictions of what this winter could be and our responsibilities to our allies in the North, at this time Prince Doran does not believe excessive trade in grains or other agricultural goods is wise."

 

"Then we should speak on matters of defense."

 

Lord Gargalen evidenced shock.

 

"Is there a new threat against the Seven Kingdoms of which I am unaware?"

 

"I speak merely from a desire to renew old agreements and oaths. Lord Stark was kind enough to make me aware of the particulars of Prince Oberyn's wedding contract with the Princess Lyarra. I noted that mutual defense was a component."

 

"As it always is in any marriage alliance between Great Houses." Lord Gargalen shrugged with the insouciance of the Dornish and was too polite to point out that Jon's marriage to Lysa was predicated upon such an arrangement and a rebellion had been birthed by it more successfully than Heirs. "Essos is too weak to pose any threat to us at the moment. Have you heard ought from the Ironborn of late?"

 

"No, has Dorne?"

 

"They have seldom preyed upon our coasts, but were they preying upon the Reach I imagine the whole kingdom would have heard of it."

 

Jon could hardly argue with that. Mace Tyrell would be quick to let everyone know if the Ironborn were raiding again. As it was, Jon was almost disconcerted by how quietthose islands had become after the Plague.

 

"Even in times of peace the safety of the realm and its peace is a great concern to the King."

 

"I believe I can honestly convey my Prince's relief in hearing that King Robert feels so strongly on such a matter."

 

"Indeed." Jon leapt upon that opening. "Prince Doran has ever been a peace-minded man. I would only ask that he reassure the realm of his dedication to such."

 

"I cannot imagine what more the realm could ask of Prince Doran after the great pains he's already gone to."

 

"The realm only asks for reassurance of  _ loyalty _ , that we might quiet some of the more mobile tongues of the realm."

 

Lord Gargalen's eyebrows went up.

 

"I would think there was enough talk of tongues in King's Landing and of silencing them to last a lifetime."

 

Jon mentally used a few words he'd once boxed both Robert's and Ned's ears for using. Not that Ned was particularly inclined to obscenity. Robert had once been, however, and hadn't had it in him to watch himself around the ladies. Once he'd noticed a newly arrived young Ned Stark tentatively looking to join in the 'adult' expressions, he'd moved to nip it in the bud quickly.

 

"A poor choice of words on my part." Jon admitted. "I mean only that, given Dorne's popularity, some might choose…  _ unwisely _ , where loyalty is concerned. There are ever scavengers circling the edges of any man's rule."

 

"An indisputable truth."

 

Silence reigned as Jon waited for the man to go on. Lord Gargalen said nothing, however. He merely sat peacefully in his chair in the Hand's solar. He drank his wine in quiet contemplation and patience. Jon did the same and picked up a slice of apple from the plate sitting upon the small table between them and enjoyed its crisp flesh. Frustrating as it was, he was once more locked in an impasse.

 

"The Crown was much relieved that Prince Oberyn came out of the melee uninjured." Jon went on. "As was Lord Stark. It's unusual for a man newly Marked to participate in a melee. That the Princess is with child made it moreso."

 

Lord Gargalen's razor thin smile acknowledged the change in tactics.

 

"The Prince offered his most sincere apologies for any disruption to the King's amusement he caused, but you can surely understand how incensed a man might become to find his own kin's murderer an arm's length away, free to enjoy cheap ale and a festive atmosphere while his sister's babe lies in her tomb with her bones in broken shards from the grizzly manner of her death."

 

The man's black eyes were frostier than Ned's gray gaze had ever been, for all his largely undeserved reputation for coldness. Jon needed no reminders. This man had once dandled Princess Rhaenys on his knee, and her mother before her.

 

"The King understands and apologizes for Ser Amory Lorch's presence. Measures were taken to prevent his attendance. As they were ignored, the man now faces the King's displeasure as well as Lord Tywin's."

 

"A fearsome place to stand."

 

"Quite."

 

Jon Arryn wondered who would kill the honorless bastard first, and honestly couldn't care less. The more quietly it was handled, however, the better. The commons loved a story of revenge and Prince Oberyn needed no more accolades thrown in his direction.

 

"Do you believe that Prince Doran shall satisfied with such?"

 

"I do not claim to know either of my nephew's minds."

 

"And yet you would negotiate on their behalf."

 

"I would _accept_ _negotiations_ on behalf of the Sunchair, and take them directly to mine nephew and Prince for review. Doran's decisions are, as always, his to make in his own time."

 

"And what of the decisions of the King?" Jon's patience had finally worn thin. "Let us bandy no more fine words about. You have seen the situation in King's Landing. While we are now bringing in food more regularly from the greater area of the Crowlands, the Plague has taken too great a toll. To feed the city until next year's harvest we have to bring in food from either Essos, which will come at an exorbitant rate due to their own population loss, or from the greater realm here. The Tyrells cannot afford to be seen sending out large shipments of food when they need to reassure their population that they have their best interests at heart. The Riverlands is too busy working through the worst brigandage outbreak in my lifetime to contribute overmuch. The North does not export food. That leaves Dorne to relieve the Crown's burden."

 

"Which Dorne cannot, sadly, do."

 

"Prince Doran owes the King his fealty and must respond to his orders and summons."

 

"To the extent outlined in the treaty that brought Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms, yes, it does." Lord Gargalen didn't give an inch and his black eyes were mirrored and impenetrable as he sat with his long, thin, arthritic hands laced together in his lap. "Our prerogatives in such matters are broad, Lord Hand, and were broadened farther in the agreements you reached with Prince Doran after King Robert's Rebellion."

 

"Time may have come to  _ re-evaluate _ such things."

 

"You and the King are both free to journey to my homeland to discuss such things with Prince Doran whenever you so will."

 

Jon Arryn reflected that politics provided a man many ways to say, 'Fuck you, come die on our spears.' War was never mentioned. It never would be, but the message was clear. Prince Doran and his people would not give Robert any assistance in his reign. The agreement Jon had hammered out to prevent Dorne from rebelling had been a wise thing at the time. It gave Robert the peace he needed to establish himself. It gave the Dornish the freedom to remain in their deserts, passing only their taxes to the Crown, and otherwise nursing their spleen in silence.

 

Silence and peace were two  _ different _ things. Given how much older than Robert Prince Doran was Jon would never have thought the man intended his revenge to be outlasting the King. Now, however, Jon was not so sure. How could the man have seen the result of Robert's excesses when Jon himself was continually surprised by how they worsened with each year? Doran knew Robert not at all, and Jon knew him as well as any father knew his son.

 

"I am to take it, then, that we have exhausted all matters of discussion on the subject." Jon stated bluntly, hiding his exhaustion but not his irritation.

 

"I imagine we have, Lord Arryn."

 

"If you had no intention of dealing with the Crown, Lord Gargalen,  _ why _ did your Prince agree that Prince Oberyn should come to the capitol to discuss such matters?"

 

Jon knew it was a useless question. It would not be answered honestly. The Dornish could hardly admit that they had come to spy, murder, and plot potential treason. Still, he was tired and the words pulled themselves unwilling past his gums.

 

"A summons from the King is a matter of  _ obedience _ , Lord Hand, not  _ agreement _ ."

 

Jon could hardly argue with that, could he? Still, as he politely bid Lord Gargalen a good day as the man went to catch what remained of the tourney. Jon chose not to do the same. He found himself utterly exhausted and in no mood for sport. Dorne would provide no help and would remain an enemy perched quietly in the shadows. Now, however, they would do it with a link forged in blood to Robert's only remaining firm ally beyond the lions at the door. Lysa was dead, Cat was married to Ned, and Hoster Tully would not live overlong if Varys' reports were accurate. Jon himself had to leave Robert and soon, if he was to save his own home from strife when he finally died.

 

Dorne, Jon decided, would not be his problem. Doran would not act as long as he was unsure of a victory and Ned wouldn't act against Robert unless he had the utmostreason. Something Jon now found reassuringly unlikely given the warm brotherhood he'd seen between his foster sons after the melee. What possible provocation could shake them apart? Jon couldn't imagine such a thing, and so he accepted a continuation of the fragile peace as the best deal he was going to get. Perhaps, in governance, it was all anyone ever got.

 

* * *

 

Tyrion was drunk. In fact, he was completely insensible. There was a good chance that, left to his own devices, he'd have even been dead. As he had not been left to his own devices, however, his misery was of greater concern to him than any potential demise he might have drank himself into.

 

"I thought you liked me, Bronn?" Tyrion Lannister accused the sellsword leaning against the back of the room.

 

They were in a whorehouse. That was not, in itself, unusual. What was unusual was the fact that Tyrion was fairly sure that he hadn't sampled any of the wares. The room was empty and the bed he was hanging off of didn't smell like fucking had occurred.

 

Tyrion vomited again. The world spun in circles as the action required him to move his head. Reasonably, considering the condition he'd left it in, his head protested this and sent him into another round of sick.

 

"Just get it all out." A young, soothing male voice offered. "Once your stomach's empty I have a potion that will settle it."

 

"A potion is what  _ did _ this to me."

 

"Your breathing was uneven and your heart rate sluggish, Lord Tyrion. It was essential we get some of the alcohol out of your system."

 

"Couldn't wait for me to piss it out?"

 

" _ No _ ."

 

Maester Evyn was a thin lad in his late teens. His chain was finished, but it was barely long enough to circle his skinny neck. He would never be the vaunted and valued healer and advisor of some lord. Instead he wore the simplest of gray robes and had a set of rooms above a potter's shop. His services were mainly sought out by mid-level merchants, and the largest part of his income and ability to support himself was derived from checking over the books of businessmen who suspected their clerks and scribes of dishonesty.

 

He'd treat anyone who needed him, however, if they had the coin. As such Maester Evyn was familiar with many ailments that were the complaint of sailors, soldiers, and teamsters. Bronn knew of him less as a person and more as a position, for there had long been lower maesters living above that potter's shop and willing to stitch up a sellsword or two without saying a word to the city guard about it. That was why Bronn had chosen to feth Maester Evyn when he found Tyrion lying collapsed on the whorehouse floor, barely breathing and having apparently drank himself into complete insensibility after first reaching the stage of babbling nonsense at the whores who occasionally came in to check on their rich customer.

 

"What if I had preferred to die?"

 

"If you prefer to die I can sell you something painless to ease you into the arms of the Stranger, Lord Tyrion, and then you need not waste so much good wine in the endeavor."

 

Tyrion paused to look up at the lad. The young maester looked back. His expression was a mix of sarcasm and seriousness. Tyrion decided that the young man likely did have such a poison available, would sell it to him, and wouldn't carry tales about anything that went on around him.

 

Despite his misery, however, Tyrion Lannister was loathe to die. Lysa Arryn's madness had pushed him towards death happily, but it was the men of the Vale who'd gone along with it who had Tyrion's hatred. He was small and he was ugly, but the one great evil he'd done in his life they knew nothing of. Their hatred of the mountain clans had blinded them so much that they'd run to their mad lady to hide from the Plague while others in the Vale rushed to trade with the clans to earn their own salvation.

 

Mind you, they ended up trading for the inoculation rather than the goats. Tyrion thought with humor on the change in dynamics within the Vale of Arryn that led to part of the unrest he expected to erupt at the death of Lord Jon Arryn. Those Houses that refused to believe the clans had mostly died out, leaving their castles and lands empty. The clans, having been paid through the nose for goats afflicted by goatscale by House Martell, were wealthy.

 

While his wife sat mad in the Eyrie, Lord Arryn had issued orders to Ser Brynden Tully to arrange to bring the mountain clans home, so to speak. While they had a long way to go until they were civilized, plopping them down in castles and making them give their word to obey the laws while they had reasons to - such as wealth and rank and comfortable living - probably would manage it in a generation or two. Especially since a condition of being recognized and given lands had been that the clan chiefs foster their Heirs and other children out at with men loyal to and trusted by Jon Arryn.

 

Tyrion's grandfather had proven that bribery alone was a useless tactic. Tyrion was now seeing that his father's fear-mongering was itself only effective until one's enemies were in the position of power. A carefully balanced combination of incentive, threat, and having a lot to lose seemed far more effective.

 

Eventually even the dry heaving stopped. The emetic ran its course and Tyrion's stomach was empty. He was given a large cup of hot beef broth with some powder mixed into it, and it began to sooth the twisting in his guts almost immediately. The pounding in his head was another matter, but he knew that was only partially the wine.

 

_ 'Someone here is lying. For once it is not me… and I don't even believe it is you. I hope that, if you find out who it is, it makes things better for you, and not worse.' _

 

Words spoken in the night by someone who had no reason to help him and every reason to hinder and lie should not have harmed him so. Tyrion needed to think. If only his head and his heart would calm down. Both felt like they were bleeding, but the room was as clean as any whorehouse ever got. The heartsblood he felt should have been splashed over every wall was not present.

 

"You're not going to off-yerself?"

 

Bronn's suspicious question jarred him out of his reviere and Tyrion rallied enough to find some sarcasm.

 

"Afraid all of your good work in the Vale will be undone?"

 

"No, m'Lord. This is the cushiest job I've ever had. Hate to lose it to some stupidity over a woman."

 

"Was I babbling last night?" Tyrion groaned.

 

He had been very drunk. He was talkative under normal circumstances. That he used it as a weapon was a given, and he was in control of it. Completely out of his mind with wine to the point that he'd nearly poisoned himself despite his considerable tolerance that control had probably flown off like a particularly addled raven.

 

"Nah, more like raging."

 

"About what?"

 

"Women."

 

"Any in particular?"

 

"Well, ye' seemed to go back and forth at one point over whether ye' were admirin' the Lady Gwyn for telling scurrilous lies with a straight face, an' havin' political sense or tryin' to order me to go drag her out of the Dornish quarters so whatever chat you had could continue."

 

"I see you didn't."

 

"Ye' don't pay me  _ that _ well."

 

"Ha." Tyrin managed a single limp bark of laughter. "What else did I say?"

 

"Spent a good deal o' the night cursing or pleadin' with a wife I didn't know ye' had."

 

Tyrion let out a deep breath, sucked in another, and calmly put down the glazed mug he'd drained of broth. His headache was beginning to recede slightly. Either this was the painless end that the maester had offered, or he knew his medications well for a man with such a short chain.

 

"And how much of the sorriest affair of my life do you now know, Bronn?"

 

Bronn stood up from the wall and went over and got the room's single chair. Turning the plain, tall-backed, wooden thing around he straddled it and crossed his arms over the back. Then he rested his chin on his crossed forearms. There was no judgement in the harsh, rough man's face. There was no condemnation either, but Bronn was fairly without morals anyway. Still, his brown eyes were hard.

 

"Did you know yer' father was gonna' sell the girl to the Ironmen?"

 

_ Ah,  _ Tyrion thought _ , Everyone has their limits somewhere. _

 

"No." Tyrion swallowed around a surge of self-loathing he wished was vomit as it raced up his throat. Vomit was something you purged, but he had a feeling he'd be dealing with this for however long his life lasted. "I knew nothing of that until last night. I just thought Father sent her away."

 

Bronn considered it and nodded.

 

"He give you a choice?"

 

"What?"

 

Bronn gave him an irritated look.

 

"Did yer' Lord Father give ye' a  _ choice _ ? I'm no idiot. Yer' no warrior an' this ain't some story. It's life an' it ain't a song. You could'na freed her if ye' tried. So, did he give ye' a choice other than throwing your gold coin with the others?"

 

"No." Tyrion bared his teeth in an expression he couldn't name. "Do you think I would have if he  _ had _ ? I'm not sure how I did…"

 

Tyrion shut himself up and suddenly wished for more wine. If it killed him, so be it. He had to stop thinking, for once. He had to stop remembering the horror on her bruised and bloody face. She'd been so pretty. She'd sworn she loved him, but it was all a lie…

 

_ Something was a lie _ , Tyrion's imagination whispered at him cruelly.

 

"Then, however it ended, don't seem like ye' had the power to stop it once it got started by marrying her. How's your Lord Father expecting you to marry again if the servants know about that? All it'll take is the High Septon hearing an' he'll go after it with both hands. He's trying to get in with the Tyrells, you said."

 

"Father already has one idiotic lush to support, he won't sponsor another when the Faith badly needs a real leader who is genuinely pious." Tyrion agreed and pulled a face. "The Reach is a seething mass of religious discontent, however, and running towards their new weirwoods with both hands. The Tyrells aren't going to help the fool, either."

 

"Ye' think telling the High Septon that would help keep yer' secret?"

 

Tyrion thumbed his nose at the sellsword, earning a hoot of laughter from the bastard.

 

"Father isn't as aware of what goes on in Casterly Rock as he believes he is." Tyrion finally spoke and the words tasted sweet and frightening on his tongue. The all powerful Lord Tywin had a weakness. It was both the most terrifying thing he'd ever heard and the most delightful. "So far I still do not believe that the servants speak of any of these things outside the Rock, but with Lady Gwyn so close to Princess Lyarra it's safe to say that that House Martell now knows all that she does. The question becomes, what does she know and what will House Martell say? You've heard no new rumors about my family since they arrived?"

 

"None that the Queen an' her spawn didn't cause."

 

Tyrion snorted and nodded. He still felt ill, but he needed to think logically. He needed to think about anything but the Parren girl's claim that Tysha had been a crofter's daughter in truth. Since when had life been his friend, however?

 

"About yer' wife-."

 

"She wasn't my wife. She was a whore Jaime hired for me, no more, no less."

 

"Nothing wrong with a nice whore wantin' a better life." The man shrugged, then leaned forward. "You've never had anything against their company since I've known ye'."

 

"Not as a  _ wife _ ."

 

"Ye' think yer' brother lied to ye'?"

 

"No." Tyrion denied fiercely. "Jaime's the only one of my family to love me, and he loves me well. He's protected me from my father and Cersei since I was born, and he trusts me with his secrets."

 

Secrets that could get them all killed, but Tyrion knew things that even his father didn't. He knew Joffrey was Jaime's. He knew of Jaime's rotten, unhealthy love for their mad sister. He'd have shriven his brother of it, if he could, because Cersei was a disease that destroyed everything she was allowed to infect, but he'd given up on that task long ago. The twins would not be parted.

 

Bronn seemed to consider that and slowly nodded.

 

"I could see it. The Kingslayer's done right by you before."

 

Jaime had led two expeditions with sellswords at his back to try and retrieve Tyrion from Lady Arryn. He'd gotten the King's permission, but had told neither Lord Tywin nor Cersei of his plan. The first had come to nothing, for he hadn't known that Tyrion was at the Eyrie and had instead spent three months rattling around the Mountains of the Moon. He'd raced back to King's Landing when Cersei had sent a letter saying Tommen had come down with the Plague. Tyrion didn't blame him for that.

 

The second attempted rescue had been better. That time Jaime had come with a maester, and it was that decision that had saved his life. Bronn had saved Tyrion in a trial by combat at that point and was taking him down to get on a ship, but Tyrion was eaten up by fever from the infection that had settled into the wounds he'd taken killing the shadowcat. Jaime's heroics had fallen short, but Tyrion appreciated the large, sword-calloused hand clasping his as Jaime rambled stupid stories of the Kingsguard in Tyrion's direction during the entire trip back to the capitol.

 

"He wouldn't lie." Tyrion repeated, feeling slightly comforted.

 

Something flickered in Bronn's face and he just nodded.

 

"What?"

 

"Nothin'."

 

"I know what you look like when it's  _ nothing _ , Bronn. Tell me."

 

"You bought my sword, not my thoughts, m'Lord."

 

"For what I pay you, I should have free access to both. Don't pretend that you didn't entertain the ladies here on my coin while I was being tended by the maester. I'll take an answer as recompense."

 

Bronn smirked at that, showing that Tyrion had spoken true. Then he sat up straighter and looked Tyrion in the eye. His expression said that Tyrion would have been happier had he let it go. Since when had he ever been able to do that, however?

 

"Yer' brother defied yer' father ta' save ye'... would he obey 'im to do the same?"

 

"What?" Tyrion asked, then paused and swallowed. "My father's many things, but he's not a kinslayer. He's said it to me, often enough, because I apparently owe him a great deal for not committing infanticide."

 

"Plenty o' things between life and death that ain't pleasant, yer' lordship. Take the Ironmen, for instance."

 

Tyrion found himself having trouble breathing again.

 

" _ Enough _ ." Tyrion mastered himself. "Look at me, Bronn. I'm not a figure for even a whore to love. You're the one who caught Shae."

 

Tyrion still felt sick about that. He'd seen to Shae's comfort as well as he could when she'd followed him into King's Landing during the worst of the Plague's riots and tumult. He'd gotten her inoculated quickly. He'd genuinely thought she'd cared, but she'd betrayed him too. 

 

Apparently she'd gotten tired of bedding a half-man and thought that his father, who had threatened dire things if he took another whore on, might give her enough funds to flee the capitol entirely and start her own brothel where she could be a madame in some better place.

Tyrion had put her on a ship to Pentos with only enough funds to barely survive. She'd have to find employment in her chosen profession again, and not as a madame in charge of her own life and establishment. Let her begin as he'd found her.

 

"S'not my problem, either way, if ye' don't mind me sayin." Bronn shrugged.

 

"I don't." Tyrion replied dryly and stood, finding his legs weak but capable.

 

"What now?"

 

"An excellent question."

 

What now?

 

Strictly speaking a responsible son would go to his father and share this news. The Lady Gwyn did, in fact, know at least one very dirty family secret. She knew others and would likely have shared them with the Dornish. If the Red Viper waited to spread them, it was only so that he could get his pregnant wife safely from the city before he had agents do it in his place. Not something he'd have expected of Prince Oberyn, but his choice to join the melee excepted, the man had showed a willingness to be cautious where his soulmate and child were concerned. One that made sense considering he'd been ready to slaughter someone when the attempt was made to poison the unborn child. Whatever his other reputation was, he was known to be fond of his bastards and a trueborn child would be worth no less to him.

 

Tyrion was loathe to. Perhaps first, because it would be to admit defeat where the Lady Gwyn was concerned. Something inside him still snarled and grasped at the gleaming prize that Lord Tywin had offered him. The Rock might not be  _ his _ directly, but his son could be the next Lord of the Rock. He'd hungered for acknowledgement his whole life, and if this wasn't that, then it was the closest he'd ever gotten. Tyrion was no fool. If he admitted failure in this his father might outright name one of Kevan's boys his Heir. Tyrion couldn't abide that, not after all he'd suffered.

 

Then there was Jaime. Tyrion locked away Bronn's suggestion that his brother might have lied to him to protect him from some worse fate at their father's hands. He couldn't think about it. It might be  _ true _ and if it was… Tyrion had been cast in the sky cells. He knew what it was to stand upon a precipice and he didn't want to cast himself over this one. He had no idea what waited on the other side. His brother would not have lied to him, not about Tysha.

 

Another part of Tyrion simply wouldn't speak because to do so would be to do right by his father. Lord Tywin's cold voice and his dismissal hovered in Tyrion's memory. How he'd stood like a statue of ice and watched as the woman- the whore- Tyrion had sworn himself to before the Seven was violated by the guards; all of that was much on his mind. His anger was just beneath the surface of his skin, and threatened to break free. What kind of monster he'd be revealed to be then, who knew?

 

One monster loomed large over his life, however, and was as much creature as it was idol. Tywin Lannister had harmed him as much as he'd ever raised and protected Tyrion. More than all else he hated being shamed and mocked. Tyrion would remain silent on the matter of the secrets that Lady Gwyn might have already given to the Dornish or might give in the future because when they came out? When they came out he would enjoy watching his father rage as their name was dragged low.

 

Perhaps then Tyrion could finally find House Lannister within his reach.

 

* * *

 

After their fight, Lyarra felt too exposed to wear any of her Dornish gowns. Instead she wore one from her trousseau that she was totally comfortable in. It was a very simple gown, a cotehardie with a modest neckline made of pink velvet that Sansa had insisted be made despite Lyarra's ambivalent feelings about the color. Lyarra often thought that Sansa put her in the color just because it clashed with the redheaded girl's hair so badly.

 

Lyarra had twisted her own hair up into a knot and then slid a carved wooden ring around the base. Pushing a smooth wooden pick through it, she'd secured her hair simply. She'd bowed to Walda's suggestion that she wear the thin silver viper circlet that her husband had recently given her, and over that a translucent veil of silk that was wrapped over her hair and pinned beneath her chin. Around her hips was the long belt of silver disks and moonstones that her brothers had gifted her when she wed.

 

"You're pale, Princess, are you sure you're well enough? I can send for a maester and a tonic, if it should leave you more comfortable?"

 

The King was all solicitude. Lyarra sat beside Oberyn in the royal box and firmly wished she could have gone down with Arya and stood with some guards to watch the match from the green. Her husband had forgone his place in the jousting out of deference to her feelings and his own ribs, but Lyarra still couldn't quite forgive him.

 

"The Princess'  _ husband _ spent time at the Citadel. If my wife is in need of care, I am happy to provide it, Your Grace." Oberyn said shortly.

 

She was angry. Her anger was mostly directed towards her husband, but some was directed at herself. She'd apologized for slapping him. That was _no_ _way_ for a dispute to be solved in a marriage. Oberyn had laughed it off, saying he'd been slapped for less by women and at least she hadn't gifted him with her fist, as he knew that she knew how to throw a punch, but Lyarra expected better of herself. She wouldn't slap her husband again; if he got her that mad, she'd just lock the door.

 

"I'm well, Your Grace." Lyarra replied with more grace than her currently short-tempered husband and smiled slightly to offset Oberyn's mood. "I'm a Stark; we're all pale."

 

"It's better than the alternative." Lord Stark added wryly and the King was distracted fully.

 

"I've been telling you to wear a full face helm for  _ decades _ , Ned."

 

"We don't wear such in the North."

 

"Well, you're not in the North, and now you're sunburned, aren't you?"

 

Ned Stark stared sullenly at all and sundry and the King sat smug in his throne-like chair with his point firmly made. The Warden of the North did have a suspiciously red nose, and his cheekbones over his dark beard were red as well. Lyarra felt a flare of sympathy for her father, who was going to end up peeling like a fence lizard.

 

"What was it you put on Arya so she wouldn't burn?" Lyarra turned to ask her husband and Oberyn, who'd settled back into his seat again.

 

He looked at her with sharp black eyes, but the set of his mouth softened somewhat and he slid his arm around her to curl it over her belly. It was his left arm, and Lyarra slid her hands down to begin to idly stroke the Mark on his wrist. She'd found that hers was very sensitive to her soulmate's touch, and Oberyn's was the same. The gentle press of her fingers there could calm him, and she hoped it would.

 

Oberyn wished to be out hunting for Amory Lorch. He could not, however, for he must attend the tourney. The King had commanded he be there, likely so he could command Lyarra as well without causing any more of a stink with the attention he paid her. Now, however, Oberyn sat just feet from two different people he wished dead while a third was unaccounted for.

 

Lyarra would have felt more sympathy if she weren't still angry for the lack of care he'd shown their babe. Her own life… she was attached to, but she would have understood risking it for the Princess Rhaenys' justice. She was a Stark and honor and justice were important to her. The babe inside her was another matter, and it was Oberyn's responsibility to protect their living child before he rushed off for vengeance.

 

Lyarra also wished that Gwyn were present. She'd shown a deft ability to shift conversations when she wished, and her ability to throw false good cheer around and ask leading, fawning questions with a straight face was useful in the King's presence. From what Lyarra saw King Robert wished to live in the past, for it was a happier place for him. Lyarra was hardly going to encourage this, seeing as he looked at her and saw her Aunt Lyanna, but Gwyn could and did fearlessly prompt him for stories of his time in the Eyrie or look on with fake worship as the King told tales of the Greyjoy Rebellion.

 

Gwyn's delight in tales of the Greyjoy Rebellion might not have even been false. Her grandfather had died in it, along with several aunts, uncles, and cousins who Gwyn had grown up around. Lyarra hadn't quite realized the scope of the damage done to Lannisport until Gwyn had fully described it during the first day of the tourney, while distracting the King. It was entirely possible that the King's bloody tales of crushing the Ironborn really did please Lyarra's friend and Gwyn had just been too polite when it came to Lyarra herself and Robb to needle Theon about it. Lyarra recalled that it had taken Gwyn quite a while to warm up to Theon at all.

 

Gwyn had been up late securing a supply of food that was assuredly safe after the scare they'd had with Ghost discovering the attempt to poison their child. Another reason her husband should have been ready to be cautious, but hadn't been. Either way, Gwyn had been too tired and was instead sleeping, well guarded, back at the castle while Lyarra sat in the Royal Box and watched the jousting finals and the end of the tourney. How had four days become so interminable?

 

"Have you a favorite for the joust, Princess Lyarra?" Prince Joffrey jumped into the conversation.

 

In the Queen's absence, he'd settled into the seat closest to his father. The King looked uncomfortable with it, but mostly ignored his son in favor of talking to Lyarra or her father. Beside Joffrey, Lord Tywin sat. His expression was severe, but with the Queen back at the castle recovering from her own loss, the Lord of the Rock's presence seemed enough to restrain the prince a great deal.

 

"I did, however, he was kind enough to withdraw in deference to his wife's condition." Lyarra answered and Oberyn turned to smile at her.

 

Lyarra had no idea why anyone would want to play the so-called Game of Thrones. If faking your emotions and wearing a mask all the time was most of the Game, it was not at all joyful to play it. If anything, she'd have rather been in the practice yard with a tourney sword or sitting down to a cyvasse board. She could think of a thousand things she'd rather do than measure her every word and respond appropriately each time, but what else could she do? She was a Princess now.

 

For the first time since she married Lyarra missed Smalljon Umber a little. Despite that, when her husband curled his arm more tightly around her and pressed a kiss to her cheek she leaned into it slightly. It would not do to show weakness.

 

"I hope that Ser Loras wins." Walda added in her happy, bubbly way. "The Knight of Flowers is  _ so _ handsome! Lord Renly really is quite lucky to have such a comely soulmate."

 

"What would that matter? They're both men. They don't  _ do _ anything." The prince scoffed and Lyarra pressed her lips together while Oberyn turned to look at the boy.

 

Lyarra prepared to do something to distract her husband from whatever he was about to do or say, and then she found that she didn't have to.

 

There'd been a break between joust. A knight of the Reach who Lyarra wasn't familiar with had just made his run against a hedge knight, and been unhorsed. It had been a bad fall and the Reach knight was taken off the field. The hedge knight had gallantly gone with his opponent to the edge of the field to see if he was well. Apparently he was not because a man of around Oberyn's age had picked up the fallen knight's sword and was currently making a wild bid for the life of the hedge knight, who had his shield with him but had not worn his own sword while jousting.

 

"What in the blazes is it  _ now _ ?!" The King bellowed in frustration and stood up, gesturing to the line of gold cloaks beneath the field and towards where a kingsguard stood at the base of the royal box to match the other two white cloaks guarding inside. "Go break that up!"

 

The city guard ran to do so, as did the kingsguard in question. It proved to be a short fight. The downed knight had revived enough to reach out. The aggressor, apparently his father, abandoned the fight to go to his son's side.

 

"For the love of the Seven, can't I even have a gods-be-damned tourney without something going wrong?" King Robert cursed as he resumed his seat.

 

"You should-."

 

"A Prince does not presume to tell a King what he should do, Grandson." Lord Tywin's cold voice carried clearly over the Prince's sudden enthusiasm and Prince Joffrey wilted back into his seat, sitting with a sullen expression on his face as he chewed his lower lip.

 

"Well said, Lord Twyin." The King agreed, then leaned forward and waved an arm. "What are we waiting for? Get the next set of men in place!"

 

Of those in the Northern party only Ser Domeric had made it to the jousting semi-finals. Jory had jousted, but ended up unseated by a knight from the Riverlands. Ser Rodrik had stayed behind in Winterfell. The two other men who'd ridden hadn't lasted beyond two bouts, either.

As such it was no surprise when Lyarra only recognized the two men riding against each other by reputation. Lord Bryce Caron of Nightsong unshorsed Ser Dezial Dalt upon the field. The King's enthusiasm for the man's feat was nearly equaled by the general irritation that the Dornish felt over it. Lyarra herself was disappointed. the Lord of Nightsong was a polite enough man, but she knew Ser Deziel well. He was kind, courtly, and genuinely gallant.

 

"One for the Marches." The King observed with a grin that was all teeth in his black beard as he looked over at where Oberyn sat.

 

"A rather lonely number, don't you think?" Oberyn quipped in return and lifted Lyarra's hand to press a kiss against the knuckle behind her wedding ring.

 

"Is Ser Daemon next?" Lyarra asked to derail things.

 

"I think he is! That's his horse." Walda enthused, helpful as always.

 

"Yes," Lord Gargalen observed. "I am sure he shall assure Dorne's honor in this match."

 

He did, sending the Lord of Nightsong to the turf after they each broke a lance upon the other's shield.

 

"He rides well for a  _ bastard _ ." The King allowed and Lyarra couldn't help frowning at that comment.

 

Oberyn smirked at her and she turned and asked after Lord Gargalen's knee. There were a lot of steps to get into the Royal Box, after all, and they were steep. She wasn't going to indulge his urge to smirk at her over the fact that the King was oblivious to giving offense even as he tried to curry favor. She'd already more than seen the man's deficiencies. At this point, Lyarra couldn't be happier to get out of the city and was mentally reviewing a letter to Sansa that would properly express such.

 

The next match featured Ser Loras Tyrell and Ser Daemon. There had apparently been stern words about the mare in heat that the Knight of Flowers had ridden before. As such, the youngest son of Lord Mace Tyrell was riding a pale golden stallion. It was a pretty beast in every way, and his comfort on it was clear. Ser Daemon made it through four attempts against the younger knight, and both had skill sufficient to keep from breaking more than once lance upon the other, but in the end Ser Daemon ended up on the turf. Rolling to his feet, the Bastard of Godsgrace took the cheers and waves of the crowd in stride as he made his way off the field.

 

"Oh, Ser Domeric's next!" Walda enthused and Lyarra's father sat forward.

 

"You'd see the North win, then, Ned?" the King grinned at his friend and Lyarra's father offered him a restrained smile back.

 

"Ser Domeric has impressed me. He's a young man with many good qualities."

 

"I don't know that  _ I _ would say so." Prince Joffrey rallied, obviously put out at not being the center of attention and feeling less wary of his grandfather now that Lord Tywin had turned to speak to a servant who had entered the box, bowed, and lowered his voice to whisper to his lord.

 

"Whyever not?" Walda asked, surprised into addressing the Prince of Tongues.

 

The young boy looked over at Walda, his eyes dragging over her and his lip curling in disdain.

 

"He's nothing more than a barbarian. He didn't even make his knightly vows in a  _ Sept _ , so I don't know why we call him 'ser'." Prince Joffrey sneered. "What kin or connections does he have outside of some pile of frostbitten stone further north even than Winterfell? The only time  _ anyone _ hears of a Bolton is when they're talking about flaying people, and they don't even do  _ that _ anymore. Though, I suppose at least he isn't fat."

 

Walda's expression remained perfectly cheerful, but it wasn't as if it were a particularly elegant put-down. Walda had told Lyarra that she'd spent years dealing with her family's japes at her expense. She was hardly going to respond to the Prince. The King was less stolid and King Robert reddened beneath his beard, no doubt at the fact that his son had seen fit to mention Walda's weight when King Robert likely weighed thrice what she did, if not more.

 

Lyarra, however, felt her own temper flare. She clamped down on her urge to say something, however, when she felt her father's booted foot gently press against her ankle. His gray eyes were sharp and she suddenly pictured the greasy black stain on the floor of the Great Hall. Her father, Lyarra suddenly realized, knew more caution where madness was concerned than most.

 

"I'm sure the relevance of the Faith and their vows has been much appreciated by all of those who took their kind advice on the inoculation." Oberyn purred next to her and despite her anger Lyarra felt a sudden well of affection for her husband.

 

Lord Tywin's lips pressed thin and Prince Joffrey turned, his face reflecting pleasure at being agreed with before he realized he'd just been mocked. At that point his face fell, his cheeks reddening, and his expression curdling. Beside him King Robert let out a rough huff of breath.

 

"Mark my words, Joffrey, because you won't hear them again: Prince Oberyn is correct." The King said, startling them all, and turned a severe expression on his son. "Lord Redfort has spoken to my Hand in correspondence of Ser Domeric's skill, as well as his bravery in facing down a raiding party of mountain clansmen. He was forced into battle on his very trip to the Redfort and proved his bravery then when a page no older than you. Speak again on the matter when you've proven yourself in battle and no sooner."

 

"I  _ will _ prove myself, father!" Prince Joffrey leaned forward. "I need but the chance, I promise you."

 

"We will see." The King sat back. "Now attend the tourney and mind your damned manners."

 

Ser Domeric then rode and defeated two opponents. His first was neatly done, sending a Stormlands knight tumbling form his horse in one pass. The next was more difficult, for he faced Ser Barristan the Bold himself.

 

The first pass left Domeric swaying in his saddle, for the Lord Commander struck true against his shield. The second saw both lances shatter and the crowd went wild, with the King forgetting his annoyance to bellow his enjoyment of the spectacle. The third was a repeat of the previous and a hush fell as the fourth came and went with more shattered lances. When, on the fifth go of it, Ser Domeric knocked Ser Barristan's shield from his arm and the famed knight lost his grip on his lance and raised his hand to signal his defeat, the cheering was deafening.

 

"It's down to Ser Loras and Ser Domeric!" Lyarra enthused.

 

"We'll see now if Ser Ulwyck has to explain to his brother why their stable is about to be short one sand steed." Oberyn grinned down at her, momentarily simply enjoying the contest as she was. "If so, that is a melee I want to see! Not to mention Willas' attempt at dancing about in glee; he's wanted to buy in some of Lord Uller's stock for years, but Ser Uller will not sell to a Tyrell."

 

"Has Lord Willas not tried buying through a third party?"

 

"He has, but thwarting his attempts has become something of a Dornish national pastime in the last few years, and I refuse to take sides so he cannot appeal to me for assistance."

 

"That's awful." Lyarra complained, but she found herself smiling.

 

"And hilarious?"

 

"Well, yes, that as well."

 

Lyarra felt herself forgive him just a bit, then. Because he'd made a mistake. Because he was awful, but her husband wasn't on the lists. It was where he wanted to be, and it was where his skill would have merited he be, but he'd forgone it for her sake and to show his caring for their child. She wasn't yet to truly have things as they were between them, but she felt less inclined to sneak into Walda and Gwyn's quarters later and sleep with them when night came.

 

"Here, they're riding the procession!" The King pointed and stood up.

 

What followed was a short speech that centered on riling the crowd. Lyarra was surprised at how well the King handled it. She recalled that her father had once said that the king was wildly popular with the commons. Perhaps, had the Plague not so discredited him, he would still be. As it was the smallfolk recalled him giving away the prize from the melee the day before, and he was throwing them a lovely spectacle, so they were warm enough in their cheering as Ser Loras and Ser Domeric prepared to joust.

 

"Two more different knights could not have been found anywhere, could they?" Walda asked quietly and Lyarra nodded.

 

"Like night and day." Oberyn agreed.

 

"Which do you favor, Prince Oberyn?" Lord Tywin, who had largely sat silently beside his grandson, finally spoke. "You  _ do _ , after all, have great experience in the lists, a knowledge of Ser Domeric's skills and a history of jousting against the sons of Highgarden."

 

"I have never seen Ser Loras joust outside this tourney, so I can hardly judge his skills properly, Lord Tywin." Oberyn replied, his smile one of fang and his eyes all black dragonglass as he looked on the man who'd likely ordered his kin slaughtered. "I believe Ser Domeric's skills will speak for themselves."

 

"If you're confident, how about a wager on the matter?" Prince Joffrey leaned forward suddenly, his expression sharp and his eyes flickering towards his father and back, obviously keen on gaining attention and noticing that the King was not pleased to look upon the Red Viper.

 

It made Lyarra nervous and she twined her fingers with her husband's. He squeezed her hand back, showing that for all his coiled attention his temper was not running away from him. She appreciated it, and then felt a moment's disconnection over it. Her husband was forty years old, he was battle tested, and far more experienced than she was. Old insecurities tangled up inside her for a moment, wondering if she was being ridiculous and her husband was only humoring her.

 

"As you consider him such a barbarian, I suppose I will take the side of the North. Fifty dragons on Ser Domeric." Lyarra was frankly shocked when Oberyn turned to her father with a small bow in his seat. "It seems that the extremes of Westeros are ever maligned for our differences, does it not?"

 

She could see that the King was not pleased when his son grinned in delight.

 

"Make it a  _ thousand _ ." The Prince grinned back sharply. "I put my faith in a proper knight."

 

" _ Done _ ."

 

Oberyn's agreement left Lyarra with a bad taste in her mouth. It was perhaps not a ruinous sum to a prince, but Lyarra's knowledge was of her own finances, not her husband's. Just the idea of spending that much money on anything that wasn't supplies for winter, troops, or in building something deeply important left her feeling queasy. Beside her Walda looked pained. Lord Gargalen looked… as urbanely and politely blank as anyone else.

 

Only the King had begun to look slightly pleased as he glanced at his son. Apparently he disliked how the boy spoke of the North, but his appreciation of large gestures approved of the dramatic bet. Lord Tywin merely looked a bit annoyed, but Lyarra judged that even that much expression projected great disapproval. The servant who the Old Lion was speaking to was watching his lord's face closely as he moved to stand out of the way, and Lyarra saw as a fine sheen of sweat broke out over the man's forehead.

 

They did indeed look very different as Ser Loras and Ser Domeric charged down the field. The youngest son of Lord Mace Tyrell wore gleaming silver armor covered in etched and chased flowers. Chains of roses and other garlands wound around his chest, over his arms, and then down onto his cuisse and greaves. Now that he was in the finals to face off against the man who would either beat him or serve as his runner up, Loras Tyrell had donned his infamous cloak of living flowers. Golden roses were wound about with a carpet of green ferns, sprays of little white maiden's tears, and morning glories in a dozen colors mingled with pansies. Lyarra didn't know what bothered her more; the pointless expense of it or the inherent silliness.

 

She would do a sketch anyway. Sansa would  _ love _ it. Lyarra swore she'd find the time to paint it too. Nothing less than vivid watercolors would do. Lyarra decided that she would include another vision of knighthood in that painting. For while the lean man of middling height from the Reach was undisputedly more beautiful on his graceful golden mount and trailing flower petals, it was  _ another _ idea that had latched onto her mind and Lyarra decided it was a good and prudent one in every way.

 

Opposite Ser Loras Tyrell was Ser Domeric and Lyarra already knew how she would describe him to her dreamy younger sister. In fact, as she sat there, Lyarra began to write the letter in her mind. It was a good activity, as it kept her occupied in thought rather than worrying about the ungodly sum her husband had just wagered on a boy riding his first tourney. She would sent it by raven in a few hours and it would explain the tourney quite well, if with a slight bent towards the dramatic that Lyarra didn't usually indulge in.

 

As it was she watched and listened as the Southron knight on the palomino stallion raced at the young Northern lord-to-be mounted on a great blood bay from the Ryswell's stables. The first time they brought their lances to bear both men struck true. Ser Loras and Ser Domeric both swayed slightly in their saddles, moving expertly with the force rather than letting it take either of them to the ground. Neither had broken a lance.

 

They lined up again and Lyarra found herself spellbound. For a moment things shifted and she suffered from confusion as her viewpoint swapped. Suddenly she was on the green, staring from beneath white fencing at the two horses charging towards each other, and the scent of the crushed grass, churned earth, and sweating horses was much more intense. Oddly enough, Arya and Nymeria were right there. Then Lyarra blinked and was back up in the Royal Box, her hand twined with her husband's as both Ser Loras and Ser Domeric sat firmly in their saddles but their lances shattered into toothpicks against one green shield bearing three roses and another of rose pink bearing House Bolton's infamous flayed man.

 

"Damn, they're not playing games today!" The King enthused and Prince Joffrey joined in.

 

"Ser Loras will have him out of his saddle in the next pass!"

 

Oberyn said nothing, merely watching closely. Thrice more in quick succession lances shattered. By this point the crowd was going wild and Lyarra found herself claiming Walda's free hand with her own as everyone found something to cheer over.

 

Again the knights rode against one another, then again, and yet again. Lances shattered each time and Ser Domeric and Ser Loras were both nearly unhorsed. Still they clung in place and Lyarra found herself screaming with the rest of the crowd when they lined up yet again.

In the end, it was actually the horses that determined the match. Ser Loras' horse was clearly the more nimble of the two and both times that Ser Domeric was nearly unhorsed it was because of Ser Loras' excellent skill in maneuvering his mount. In their final charge, however, the more delicate stallion had grown fatigued. It had to run wearing a heavier and larger blanket in the heat. It was wearing more gear, and heavier gear as well.

 

The great beast from the Rills probably weighed twenty stone more than the beautiful golden beast from Highgarden. Though Ser Loras' was lighter, in the end, the sheer strength of the great Northern stallion and its rider was not something Ser Loras was prepared to counter after so many turns riding against one another. After going for skill for so long, Ser Domeric changed tactics unexpectedly. As Ser Loras attempted to finess his own lance's point across his opponent's saddle to unhorse him, Ser Domeric visibly and easily adjusted his seat in his saddle as though he were just an extension of the animal. Then he put his weight behind his lance and drove it into the center of Ser Loras' shield.

 

The golden stallion stumbled as his rider's weight shifted suddenly to try and offset the blow. Ser Loras lost his balance. Beside her she heard Oberyn gasp and then felt his grip on her hand relax as Ser Loras' feet easily slipped from his stirrups and he neatly tucked and rolled on the turf and out of the way of both horses as he hit the ground.

 

The crowd's roaring was deafening. Lyarra only realized a moment later that she was on her feet, and that was because Walda had accidentally dragged her up with her when she rose to cheer. Suddenly feeling wobbly she was very grateful for her husband's presence as Oberyn freed her from her enthusiastically cheering lady-in-waiting and nudged Lyarra back into her seat, retaking his own. Lord Gargalen gently nudged Walda to resume her seat at the same time.

 

"A damned fine show!" King Robert cheered with everyone else, and then offered his praise. "Damned fine! Ned, you've got a fighter to take the Leech Lord's seat, it seems!"

 

"I'm more pleased that he's a man of honor." Lyarra's father replied, but he wore a satisfied smile on his face. " _ Look _ ."

 

Ser Domeric had nudged his own horse over and caught Ser Loras' stallion by the reins. Then he'd led the horse back and offered a bow from his saddle to his opponent as one of Ser Loras' servants gave him a leg up into his own saddle. Then Ser Domeric stood up in his stirrups, raising one of his gauntleted fists into the air in triumph.

 

"Oh, I wonder who he'll give the crown to!" Walda asked, whipping a handkerchief from her cleavage to blot delicately at her brow.

 

The King, who had momentarily been distracted by the sudden appearance and source of that handkerchief, rallied. He looked at Lyarra and his lips compressed. Lyarra remained carefully blank and, for once, a lady prayed not to be crowned Queen of Love and Beauty. Weren't there enough parallels being drawn?

 

"Well, Prince Joffrey, it seems there is a wager to settle." Oberyn's words surprised her and she looked back, finding the prince's expression a mix of blotchy red cheeks and pasty skin beneath.

 

" _ Father… _ " The Prince began to whine and the King frowned at him.

 

"You made the wager, boy, it will be up to you to settle it with honor from your own funds."

 

Lyarra thought that was a little rich considering the King's various loans. She caught sight of the prince looking towards his grandfather. Lord Tywin stared out over the field with an expression that suggested he was irritated by everything in the world at that moment. Oberyn, on the other hand, looked fiercely pleased.

 

Then Lyarra looked up and was staring down at where Ser Domeric Bolton had removed his helm. It revealed a handsome young man with very fair skin, a blandly handsome face, and almost eerily pale eyes. He held his lance aloft as he looked at the ladies in the Royal Box and Lyarra cut her eyes to Gwyn in some hope that he'd do the right and decent thing. Instead of surprising her, Ser Domeric Bolton surprised everyone, however.

 

Lowering the tip of his lance where the Crown of Love and Beauty hung, Ser Domeric Bolton laid the crown of red roses down upon the black velvet draped seat that stood empty for the dead Princess Myrcella. Then, as the crowd hushed in shock at the gesture he effortlessly directed his stallion to back up. A moment later the great beast had knelt on its forelegs, bowing with its rider to the Royal Box and paying his respects to the dead in a gesture of gallantry that would soon become legend.

 

The King sat, his expression having gone from stony to softening with grief. Lord Tywin himself looked surprised and perhaps even a tiny bit pleased. Prince Joffrey simply frowned, still cutting his eyes towards Oberyn in annoyance as the King baid the knight to rise, told him where he might go to pick up his considerable winnings, and then Lyarra found that the tourney was over. It was as great a relief as she'd thought it would be.

 

* * *

 

The smell of woodsmoke and burned flesh was strong enough that it almost blotted out the salt smell of the sea. Theon's mind tumbled back to the siege. He recalled the storming of Pike and his stomach twisted around itself to fight the memory of hunger with the memory of the upheaval of his entire world. He'd spent his early childhood being groomed to be Lord of the Iron Islands by his father, who held to the Old Ways and the Drowned God like no other.

 

He'd been ten when he'd been taken to Winterfell, and he'd never been reaving.

 

"Theon!"

 

Robb's voice, raised in a mix of concern and a plea hidden in steely control shook him from the place his mind had gone to.

 

"No survivors, Robb!" Then called back as he looked around the small stone cottage he was standing in.

 

"Bring out the bodies, then!"

 

Like the others in the village, it was placed back from the rocky shores and below a series of hills to break the cold wind that rages off the Bay of Ice and around Sea Dragon Point. Back amongst trees as added cover, the village had been a peaceful place not two moons before when they'd ridden into it to take shelter from a storm. Keavan Forrester had led them there not a full day after they'd left his home.

 

The pretty girl lying dead on the earthen floor was a year or so Theon's senior. She served as a midwife and a washer woman in the village, having no living kin and being natural born. She'd also been freer because of that and had shared a warm bed of furs and a fresh hay tick with Theon, adding to it the laughing pleasures of her body. She'd gone so far as to share her supper of stew with him, and Theon had enjoyed that evening of carefree sensuality, offered freely and without coin, while avoiding Keavan Forrester's still-prickly company.

 

Her throat had been slit and her guts spilled, but only after she'd been stripped naked. Bruises stood out sharply against her skin and blood was dried on her flattened nose and over split lips showing missing teeth. He went over to her bed and pulled off one of the sheepskins he'd romped about under with her. He used it to cover where whoever had violated her had later shoved his sword into her body to further the damage and torture that came with her death.

 

There was blood under her nails, Theon noticed. He had to work not to vomit as he stuffed her guts back into her belly. As he hoisted her stiffening corpse into his arms Theon Greyjoy hoped she'd clawed the eyes out of the fucker who'd done this to her.

 

As he stepped out into the center of the village he saw Robb standing, laying the corpse of an old man down on the clear area of small, raked stones that stood in as a square. The people there had taken great pride in it. They'd hauled what must have felt like endless baskets up to fill in the area between their small cottages and huts with smooth beach stones. Unlike other villages they didn't track mud around when they had their dances or celebrations. It was a point mentioned with pride as they puffed up in delight at receiving Lord Stark's Heir in their humble homes.

 

"We're getting close to their raids, we can't stop to bury these bodies." Robb said, his expression as grim as Lord Stark's ever was, despite how little Theon's friend resembled his father.

 

"We  _ can't _ leave my people to rot!" Stolid Keavan Forrester burst out in protest, his face streaked with tears and ash from having wiped his face on his sleeve as he laid down the body of a middle-aged fisherman who had spent two hours talking about the tricks of sailing Ice Bay with Theon after Robb had vouched for him, and despite the Kraken wrought into Theon's armor.

 

"We'll burn them, Keavan." Robb shook his head. "We can do it here. There's enough wood dried and laid in for Winter to do it, and if we do it in the stone square there's no risk it will cause a forest fire."

 

Theon heard the plan, but was too busy staring at the dead and broken face of the girl in his arms. She'd been so alive. She hadn't even wanted his coin; just the fun of bedding him. She was just a village girl. She would have hidden when raiders came. There was no  _ need _ to kill her.

 

"Theon?"

 

" _ What _ ?" He shook his head. "Yes, Robb?"

 

All around them men moved. They hadn't ridden out with an enormous party, but it was most of Winterfell's readily able men. Not enough to leave the castle without defense, just in case, but enough to make sure that whatever raiding party they rode out against wouldn't easily overwhelm them. Robb had even convinced the Blackfish to remain behind with the reasonable argument that, in the highly unlikely event that this was a feint to lure them away from Winterfell and some kind of potential second Ironborn revolt, he needed someone experienced and competent to hold the castle until he returned.

 

"Come on, we need to gather the rest of the dead quickly." Robb said, his face severe, and Theon nodded.

 

"All hands on deck, Robb."

 

Robb managed a thin smile at the nautical joke they'd shared since Robb had become his friend in his first days in Winterfell. It didn't hold the same ring. Too many lay dead because of some oceangoing raiders, and all Theon found he could do is hope that it wasn't his people.

 

As he picked up the violated body of a woman old enough to be his grandmother Theon wondered who his people were. Was he even a Greyjoy to wince away from the corpses of some insignificant greenlander peasants? So what if they'd ended up on the bad end of the iron price? You either survived or you didn't, and it was no-one's fault but their own if they were not strong enough.

 

That's what Theon's father would say. Balon Greyjoy would likely have harsher words for it yet.  _ This _ , Theon realized, was the sort of scene his father  _ gloried _ in. If he was to be the next Lord of the Iron Islands he would be expected to do the same. To take Salt Wives and wed into power.

 

_ I've grown weak,  _ Theon thought, and then in the next moment a voice in the back of his mind countered it. If the Ironborn are so strong, when was our  _ last _ great victory? The Targaryen's crushed us easily enough when the time came; we were an afterthought and an annoyance compared to the Westerlands and the Reach. Before that, we were thrown out of the Westerlands, we could raid their coast, but we had no great empire. The Riverlands did the same, though we held on longer.

 

Theon knew that the Greyjoy Rebellion hadn't even been much of a challenge for the greenlanders. What's more, however, and what was worse was seeing the difference in how the people lived. Greenlanders were taller, broader, healthier even than the nobility of the Iron Islands. A wealthy blacksmith in the Riverlands or the North could count on a steadier and better diet than anyone but a noble in Theon's birthplace.

 

The level of comfort Theon was kept in as a noble hostage and future Lord Paramount in Ned Stark's household was greater than he'd had as his father's third son at Pyke. Oh, he would have still had fine clothes, but not nearly so much clothing. His weapons would have been fine, but they'd have been exceptional for being so. In the Iron Islands there was no shortage of iron, but there was a great shortage of wood and charcoal to work it, skilled laborers to make it into fine weapons, and other necessities to support the work needed to make anything.

 

There were maybe two hundred-fifty people all together in the village. Every man, woman, and child was dead. All had been brutally murdered save for one newborn infant. The babe had been left in his cradle and, unwarmed when the fire went out, had frozen to death overnight. Smalljon Umber had tears in his eyes as he arranged the babe in the arms of a woman he thought was probably her mother. Theon didn't suggest checking to see which woman had just delivered. The bodies had been treated poorly enough.

 

"I'm going to kill them  _ all _ ." Smalljon snarled and if the young lord's father constantly complained about his Heir being tenderhearted, he need not fear it had made him soft. The young man's teeth had pulled back from inside his black beard, which was all a-bristle and his dark eyes gleamed with bloodlust.

 

"You'll kill all that are left when I run out of arrows."

 

The words were out of Theon's mouth before he considered them.

 

"And if they're Ironborn?" One of the Winterfell guards asked roughly.

 

"Then I'll be merciful and aim to give them a quick death." Theon answered and he found that… he  _ meant _ it.

 

As they rode away Theon clutched at the reins and listened to the song of the sea over the hills past the village. It called out to him like a gull on the wing. His heart  _ ached _ with sea longing as he recalled the roll of the deck under his feet as he sailed away from his home towards the North. The desire for  _ freedom _ , for a ship, for so much had been on his mind ever since he rode out with Robb and was painfully reminded of how wide the world was beyond Winterfell's walls, and how he might die without ever having seen it.

 

Now, as he rode his horse, Theon felt his dreams of a pitching deck and his father's rank fall bitter on his tongue. The dead eyes of the peasant girl haunted him. Beneath it all, however, was something far more seriously frightening.

 

If death, destruction, and clinging stubbornly to poverty in the face of change was what made someone Ironborn… did Theon  _ want _ to be no better than a murderer or a thief when he'd spent the last nine years of his life learning that there could be more to living without even realizing it?

 

* * *

 

"On Myrcella's chair?"

 

"Yes, Your Grace."

 

"He gave _my_ _daughter_ the crown." Cersei Lannister's voice broke slightly and turned tender. "Tha-that was kind of him. Northern though he may be, Ser Domeric is a _true_ knight, isn't he?"

 

"He seemed so to me, my Queen." Grand Maester Pycelle told her as he offered her a potion to soothe her agitated womb and improve her fertility.

 

Cersei accepted it and drank the noxious substance. If only Robert would cease tormenting her. If he'd just give her a moon's peace she could find time to be with Jaime. Then her twin could give her another golden child to reassure her father. She would take the oaf into her bed after she knew one of her children and not his unwanted seed had settled into her womb.

 

_ Curse his seed anyway, _ Cersei thought angrily. He lavished it on whores and ladies alike. She wanted nothing to do with it, but he would be so virile as to have defeated her careful management of her courses with Moon Tea. How could she conceive with her other half if he would not leave her  _ alone _ long enough to abandon her precautions?

 

Waving the maester away she stood up carefully from the settee she'd been sprawled across and went back to her bed. She called a maid to take away the neatly folded linen pad now soaked with her blood, and then to help her tie in place another, clean pad. Once she'd done so she allowed the maid to brush out her hair, oil it for bed, and then spread perfumed oils into her flesh before she slid between the sheets.

 

Were Jaime here, Cersei could enjoy his hands doing the task. Instead she had to tolerate it from a servant. There was no erotic joy in it. There would be none of the power she always felt in reaffirming Jaime's devotion by seeing his arousal at her state and then watching him willingly refuse himself any pleasure because her body was weeping blood after having been cleansed of Robert's unwanted get. All there was to be had were a nasty case of cramps and bloody cloths.

 

She'd even had to miss the tourney. Cersei felt  _ cheated _ in that. She would have liked to have received the crown. Cast on her daughter's chair, yes, and in proper respect but Myrcella was  _ her _ daughter and had been made in  _ her _ image; golden and perfect. A crown for her daughter was hers as well, just as she'd taken her children's pain onto herself and their suffering as her own. Were they not of her flesh, after all? Even their father was her twin.

 

Cersei's thoughts were jarred out of alignment when Joffrey came into her room, pushing past the servant girl who'd met him at the door and then scurried ahead to announce him. Cersei sat up in bed, beaming at her son. Perfect, golden, and alive, he reminded her of her losses and left her more grateful than she could say.

 

_ Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds.  _ Maggie the Frog's croaking voice rasped across Cersei's mind, but she cast it away.

 

The Plague had only taken  _ two _ of her children from her. Her eldest and dearest lived on. She'd nursed Joffrey from her own breast and her heart had cried out his perfection the moment the midwives had handed her to him. The hateful old bitch could rot in whatever heathen hell she'd been cast into. Fate had only snatched two of her children away.

 

"My darling boy-." Cersei started, but Joffrey didn't walk up for an embrace.

 

Instead her son walked past the foot of her bed and kicked it. Then he kicked a footstool so that it it rebounded away from the wall with a loud crack. The servant girl was lingering by the door jumped and it drew Joffrey's attention.

 

"Get out!" Her son yelled, shrieked really, but Cersei wouldn't think such of her son. The girl looked towards her with frightened eyes and Cersei inclined her head, allowing the girl to flee. She was pleased at the fear that the girl showed, however, for it underlined the loyalty she insisted on from her people.

 

"What's wrong, Joffrey?" Cersei asked instead, sitting up but not moving to stand. She had lost more blood than intended. Stupid midwife, she felt not the least bit of anything but satisfaction knowing that one of her personal guards had already found the woman and cast her body into the bay tied to a heavy stone. "Come tell your mother, and I'll take care of it."

 

"I'm not a  _ babe _ , Mother, I can take care of my own business." Her son's tone was mulish, and Cersei hid a smile; he was growing up so quickly.

 

"Then tell me so that I may understand, and you can put my mind at ease. I am your mother and I worry for my only child."

 

That was all it took, he walked over and sat on the edge of her bed, letting her stroke his beautiful, curling hair. All golden was her son. A proper prince who would be a strong king; nothing like the oaf she'd wed.

 

"Everything is  _ wrong _ , Mother." Joffrey complained. "Father really saw how great I am when I went out and put down the crowd that were trying to steal the Beggar King's body. I destroyed the body then, and I chased them away and Father saw how I'm like him."

 

Cersei saw nothing odd in this description. She was aware, of course, that Joffrey had chased no-one. He'd sent his guards out to fight and fled nearly immediately. However, just as she acted through others shouldn't anyone in power have those to carry out their bidding? It was intelligent for her son to put distance between himself and danger, and his minions accomplishments were as much his own as Cersei's careful maneuvering through others was hers. Besides, he was but a boy, and boys were prone to daydreams.

 

"At the tourney he  _ ignored _ me, Mother." Joffrey said sadly and Cersei's heart seethed at how her perfect son was so ignored by Robert, of all of the people. "I was right there beside him, but he paid me no mind. Instead he paid all his attention to that bastard and she doesn't even want to be here. I'm not stupid, Mother, I can see how it is. How can Father not notice that she would rather attend her worthless Dornish prick of a husband than a King?"

 

Cersei could hardly blame the girl for wishing the company of a handsome and intelligent man rather than a fat oaf. That said, Cersei seethed inside. She'd seen how the girl looked at her son and how Lord Stark looked on him as well. That mix of disgust and shocked horror that washed across their faces was followed by disdain. How dare a wolf judge a lion? Who did the jumped up bastard think she was?

 

_ Queen you shall be until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear. _

 

The words had crept into Cersei's mind as soon as she'd laid eyes on the bastard girl. They'd come with anger at first, but directed mostly at Robert. How dare he continue to shame her, and over a girl wed to a man who hated him and would no sooner give him the room to fulfill his fantasies than the girl even wanted. Cersei could see it, Joffrey could see it, the whole court could likely see the Bastard of Winterfell wanted nothing to do with the King's amorousness or his ridiculous attempts at courtly chivalry.

 

It added to Cersei's shame at her situation. It also added to her anger for it seemed no-one would take it seriously. Even her own father bid her to ignore it and get Robert's babe in her belly. She would never allow that, however, especially not to disinherit her dear son. The throne was Joffrey's. It belonged to her son and no other. She'd bled enough for it, hadn't she?

 

Thinking on Maggie's words even though she wanted to consider her prophecy debunked, Cersei had attempted to put the girl in her place. Instead she'd remained all ice during their first tea, when Cersei condescended to share space and words with a bastard. Infuriating as that was, it was nothing compared to when she'd ordered the girl to appear at court with her two ridiculous ladies. She'd thought to shame them all and instead…

 

"Your father has his concerns." Cersei opted to tell her son. "He will see your greatness Joffrey."

 

"I can become a great knight  _ here _ , Mother."

 

"I know, my son, and I'll make it so." Cersei promised and her mind whirled again, working to make it so.

 

Again she failed. Her own father wanted her son at the Rock and part of her approved of it. Tommen was supposed to inherit her father's seat. Unfortunately her sweet little son was dead now. It would have to wait, held by a cousin, until one of Joffrey's younger sons grew up to take it. The Imp would certainly never be allowed to hold it.

 

"Lord Stark paid me no mind, either." Joffrey complained and Cersei blinked at him.

 

"What would you care about the opinions of an uneducated heathen who worships trees? He's the most boring man in Westeros, Joffrey."

 

"He's a great warrior, Mother, and would have won the melee had he not bowed to Father." Joffrey enthused briefly. "He's Father greatest friend as well, and Father means for me to have and wed his daughter. Unfortunately someone's told him that those idiot merchants were innocent or some rubbish, as if all merchants weren't liars who deserved such treatment. Father's wroth that no betrothal shall happen, and even Grandfather is angry! He said we  _ need _ them, but why? We'll just buy in food from Essos if we have to, but who cares if some of the rabble starve? Then there won't be so many to need feeding during Winter."

 

"You're likely right with the smallfolk in the city; those who aren't skilled craftsmen are a burden." Cersei smiled at her son and he smiled back, beautiful in every way, his green eyes a mirror of her own. "You needn't marry some foolish, unwashed Northern girl, however. House Tyrell and others have Heirs. You have cousins in the Westerlands as well, when such a marriage is needed."

 

Cersei's own enthusiasm for binding the North had died with Lord Stark's obvious disdain for her son. When she'd found out that he'd moved to convince Robert to send her darling boy away, that was the end of it. She'd have her revenge one day.

 

In fact, she'd thought to have it sooner. If he thought the product of his own loins so blessed she'd planned to punish him and his bastard at once for conspiring to take her son away. Unfortunately they'd discovered the poison in the fruit she'd had sent down. As a result she'd had to kill off a valuable servant, and Cersei was still angry over that. The hateful, prideful bastard had deserved to birth a monster. Why should she and her useless, licentous, whorechaser of a soulmate be happy and enjoy a child they desired when Robert wouldn't leave her bed and Jaime had to be kept at a distance while she yearned for another golden child?

 

"The joust ended with that Northern knight from House Bolton winning." Her son frowned. "Which was just annoying. Northerners aren't  _ proper _ knights, are they, Mother?"

 

"Of course not. Especially not one who claims to have stood vigil before some tree. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise; they're godless heathens."

 

"Yes, Mother." Her son pulled a face. "The company was  _ ugly _ , too. Grandfather and Father were there, but only the Dornish were in the Royal Box with us, and they shouldn't have been. But who wants to deal with wrinkled old Lord Gargalen? He never does anything but  _ talk _ ."

 

Cersei stiffened. Lord Gargalen was a dangerous, subtle man.

 

"Did the Lord of Salt Shore say anything to you?"

 

"Not that I recall." Her son shrugged and then sneered. "Lady Lyarra didn't even bother to bring the  _ decent _ lady with her, Mother. The one who looks like you wasn't there, only the fat one, and she's too stupid to even realize when she's being insulted."

 

Joffrey didn't take much more reassurance at that point. He left wreathed in smiles, sure of his father's future approval. Cersei seethed inside at the thought of Robert, but her mind twisted along another path at her son's words.

 

_ Queen you shall be until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear. _

 

The words played through her mind again, but this time she didn't think of them merely in anger over the presumption of a bastard. This time Cersei Lannister's mind twisted along better paths. Because it was plain that the Bastard of Winterfell only wanted to flee from the capitol. As far as Cersei was concerned, she could. Let her go down to wilt in the desert. Once the Red Viper could no longer bait Robert he'd grow tired of being chained to her and no other, and then her life would become a misery. Cersei relished the thought of it.

 

Cersei's mind instead turned to a much more disturbing prospect. If she should fear a beauty, who more than herself? The Lady Gwyn Parren was a nobody from a nothing House and a pitiful father. Her mother was no more than a merchant's daughter.

 

Should any of that have mattered if Cersei herself were born as such? No, Cersei decided, she'd have never let such things stop her. The Lady Gwyn was beautiful and golden and she knew secrets of the Rock. Things that she should keep silent because she owed her kin and her betters, but Cersei knew without a doubt now that she would not.

 

Her stomach tensed in worry at the thought of that song. House Parren's reestablishment via a daughter of the Lannisters of the Rock and Orys Baratheon's youngest son was well-known. Thankfully the song about it was not. No-one at court was likely to have picked up enough of it to recall the words and then track back the lyrics all the way to the Westerlands, Cersei decided, but it remained a risk. Two verses of the song were about the Black Lions of House Parren and how they always had black hair and blue eyes just like the Stormlords carried on in their House. Lady Gwyn Parren was the  _ first _ of her House to have blonde hair in many generations and just that could prove dangerous.

 

Cersei felt her stomach twist. She was sure no servant had ever seen her and Jaime together. At least not other than that one in their early childhood, but she was surely long-dead. The maid hadn't been young at the time, if Cersei recalled correctly.

 

_ What if you're wrong?  _ The voice whispering at the back of her mind drove Cersei to shiver. Lady Gwyn Parren had told the bastard she served about Cersei and Jaime trading clothes so that Cersei could practice swordplay in the yard. The Queen hadn't thought any knew of that, either, but if it was such common knowledge...She'd seen the girl's lack of fear and it infuriated her even more than it frightened her. If the girl could work out even an inkling of the fact that Joffrey had no Baratheon blood she  _ had _ to die, and the more quickly the better.

 

Letting out a deep breath Cersei decided that she could solve two problems quickly if she played her cards right. Summoning a servant to fetch her most loyal guard, the Queen made her plans. It would take finesse and cunning, but she could manage both easily enough. Once it was done she'd be rid of more than one problem.

 

* * *

 

Bran Stark looked in surprise at two figures with golden hair doing something he couldn't quite make out in the wreckage and ruin of the room at the top of the Broken Tower. He wasn't at all winded from the climb, and he  _ should _ be. Why was he up on the tower again, though? He'd climbed it earlier when Ser Blackfish was busy talking with Mother and his tasks and training was done. There was no need to climb it twice in one day.

 

The next moment a strange man, handsome with golden hair and an expression that was all exasperation was shoving him from the window. Terror gripped Bran as, for the first time, his skill was useless. You couldn't climb air. He tumbled but the ground rushed up towards him.

 

Then he wasn't there at all. He was instead standing in front of the great Heart Tree. That made more sense. He'd gone to the Heart Tree to pray. Robb had gone off, likely to battle, and the Ironborn or some brigands with a ship were raiding their shores and killing their people. He'd already prayed in the Sept with his mother, but it felt a little hollow with the Septa gone and the Septon with her. Their Septon had been nice, but Bran was still angry to find that both thought spying was their right. Nobody had the right to be so dishonorable to those they'd sworn to serve!

 

"You'd be surprised what people will do or not despite the oaths they swear, Brandon Stark."

 

Bran jumped, looking around the empty Godswood to try and find who was speaking to him. There was no-one. A caw drew his eyes upward and he found himself blinking at a crow perched in the heart tree.

 

"Crows don't talk."

 

"Boys don't fly, and yet here we are."

 

The crow  _ could _ talk. Bran wasn't sure whether he was delighted or just shocked. Mayhaps shocked and delighted.

 

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" Bran suddenly recalled that his mother had insisted he go to bed.

 

"Yes, but who says dreams are  _ unreal _ ?"

 

"Maester Luwin."

 

"Maester Luwin also says magic is unreal, and yet here _ I _ am."

 

Something fired inside Bran. Unleashed, his curiosity curled through his chest and around his heart, purring like a cat. Fascinated, he stepped forward, his feet crunching damp leaves. He could smell them. It was such a  _ vivid _ dream.

 

"But if it's just a dream, it wouldn't be magic would it?"

 

"Tell that to your direwolf."

 

Bran froze. He'd never told  _ anyone _ of his wolf dreams. They were a special secret he shared with no-one but his direwolf.

 

"In fact, why have you a direwolf at all if you are not magic, Brandon Stark? They are creatures of the North, wild things born of Winter. A direwolf is no hound to serve obediently, yet with you and your kin they stay."

 

Bran had no answer to that.

 

"This was a  _ nice _ talk. We should do it again later, for now, go read your letters."

 

The crow seemed to laugh and, for a moment, he almost laughed with it. Then Bran saw its eyes. It didn't have two, as it should. Instead it had three, and the third was filled with a great and terrible knowledge. Bran felt like he was tumbling forward into it, surrounded by a thousand red eyes. Then he woke up, safe in his bed, with the cold damp nose of his wolf pressed against his hand.

 

"I've just had the oddest dream." Bran told his companion just as a wild pounding low on his door told him that Rickon had also awakened before the sun came up.

 

"Bran!" Sansa's cheerful voice called to him through the door. "Wake up, we've fresh letters from Lyarra and Father and Prince Oberyn!"

 

Frozen in bed in shock, Bran felt the hair on his arms lift up before he threw his feet over the edge and stumbled to the door in excitement. Of his dream, he could make no sense, but he promised himself that he would speak to Ser Blackfish about it. His great-uncle always gave very good advice, and he'd proven to be very tolerant of oddness when they'd passed through the Neck and Lord Reed had taken them to Greywater Watch. Now that he thought about it, hadn't Jojen Reed wished him good dreams…?

 

Many miles North of the Wall, locked in the roots of an ancient weirwood tree, the man with a thousand eyes and one smiled. Ser Brynden Rivers  _ gleefully _ contemplated his actions with a sigh that rattled the roots running through his chest. Maybe, even after all this time, he still had one good plot left in him. The gamble with the Mountain clansman and the goats had worked well enough after all, hadn't it?

 

_ "Time to harass Aemon a bit." _ Brynden decided. " _ Then I'll have to see if my niece's mind is any more open. So far that pretty white direwolf of hers listens well enough, but she's proving stubborn. Pity she's Marked to that Dornish wretch. Good Rhoynish magic there and Dorne will be a good platform to retake the throne from, but there isn't a drop of the Old Blood in the Red Viper's veins for me to work with." _

 

Outside his cave one of the Children of the Forest turned to another.

 

"The Three-Eyed Raven is in  _ such _ a good mood today."

 

"Oh, yes,  _ very _ ."

 

"It's always _nice_ when families come together, _isn't_ _it_?"

 

" _ I _ rather think so."

 

Far away the Night King sensed a shift in the winds of fate and frowned.

 


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oberyn doesn't get to be a hero. Lyarra learns more about creative use of her ancestral Stark talents. Ghost plays fetch. Gwyn finally loses her temper. Barristan the Bold is just about Done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again HUGE thanks to Madrigal_in_training. She's the reason this fic exists, makes sense, does not use the word "replied' endlessly, and has fewer ueless commas. Thanks to the best beta-reader and brainstormer out there.

**Chapter Twenty-Nine - 297 A.C.**

 

"Your Grace?" Ned frowned as he walked into the King's apartment and past where a Kingsguard waited by the door.

 

What he found inside surprised him.

 

"Ned, you're here. _Good_!" Robert grinned fiercely at him, his teeth bright through the thick black mass of his beard as he stood mostly armored save for the grieves his yellow-haired squire was placing and the vambraces the King himself was settling.

 

The new armor made the King look no thinner. In fact, it _added_ to his bulk. What it did do was cast an illusion of power onto Robert's heavy form that Ned knew wasn't entirely fakery. Though his friend was no longer what he'd been in his youth Robert had retained his strength. It was his speed and his agility that Robert had lost.

 

"At your service, my King." Ned said seriously, a mix of worry and pale hope touching him at that moment. Robert really was at his best fighting, and if this would get him out of the capitol it might even help. The smallfolk had rallied at seeing him fight, after all, and anything that improved the commons opinion of their King would help Robert's cause.

 

"Even better." Robert turned and looked at him eagerly. "I've just received a raven from the Kingslayer. Ser Jaime's found out the _real_ reason why the damned brigands are so hard to catch is they're not some bloody group of common bandits made up of the starving smallfolk."

 

Ned raised his eyebrows.

 

"Well, not the ones causing the worst chaos, at least." Robert went on. "It's the Bloody Mummers."

 

Ned blinked and then he felt his face twist in disgust.

 

"You mean that honorless sellsword company that calls itself the Brave Companions?"

 

"It won't call itself much of anything when I'm through with them, Ned." The King grinned. "They've got the Kingslayer and his men pinned down at a hunting lodge of mine out in the Kingswood, but they're holding out. I'm taking a group of men to deal with them. According to Ser Jaime there are perhaps a hundred altogether. Most of the tourney's folk haven't left, so I can have three times that of mounted knights and others without even raising my own forces. It's late evening now, and if we leave by sunset and ride through the night we can come upon them unawares before dawn."

 

Ned breathed out, nodding.

 

"They came upon Ser Jaime when he was returning to the Red Keep."

 

"Despite orders _not_ to return from where I'd sent him until he'd ended the damned brigandage." Robert snorted. "The man's spent all his time since the Plague took the children attending his sister. If it weren't for the Imp telling me that he's trying to keep the Queen from abandoning her senses entirely I'd remind the man exactly who he serves. For now having that harpy act at least _partially_ sane's too damned important."

 

"I'll ride with you, then, if you'll have me?"

 

He couldn't help feeling that the Queen's hatred was a danger to his friend and King. Lord Tywin was trying to stabilize the realm, and as much as Ned loathed him he could admit that this was important. He wouldn't lay his daughter on the altar of securing power for children of the man's line, but he could admit that Lord Tywin didn't want to see everything devolve into war.

 

Queen Cersei, however, did not strike him as someone who would put _anything_ before her own desires. He had no idea what she was like before she'd lost two of her children to the Plague. Now her actions were often erratic and blatantly hostile towards the King and those around him, even those who were desperately needed allies. Her position would be even more precarious given her recent miscarriage. Ned might have loathed the Game of Thrones but even he could see that the clearest way to cement her position as Queen would be to become Queen Regent to her remaining son.

 

Robert, Ned promised himself, was _not_ riding out alone. He would have to trust Prince Oberyn to watch the girls in his absence despite his foolish behavior at the tourney.

 

"If I'll-." Robert seemed beside himself with pleasure, grinning and reaching out to clap Ned on both shoulders so hard he jarred the Lord of Winterfell's bones with the unintentional show of strength. "Go get your gods-be-damned armor!"

  


Bowing, but suddenly shooting a sharp-toothed grin at his friend Ned turned to go.

 

"You're not going to try and bring-."

 

"The Red Viper can stay behind and watch the women. Now that the Gods have Marked him, he's even trustworthy with the task." Ned replied ironically as he left and the sound of Robert's wry laughter chased him out of the room.

 

* * *

 

 

_To my dear sister,_

 

_Sansa, I will not waste your time with any other tale for I must keep this letter light in deference to the watercolor I am sending with it. I had to let you see a bit of the last day of the joust, however, for it is a tale that should be much repeated in the North. I insist you let Bran see the painting, though, and promise to tell him that I will send him one of his own if it will prevent you two from spatting over it._

 

_The gleaming figure you see with the cloak of flowers is Ser Loras Tyrell. Lord Renly Baratheon's soulmate is a fine and famed jouster, though he's only just seen his sixteenth nameday not long ago. He's been attending tourneys since he was fifteen and jousted against knights as a squire. He was always and ever favored as the winner, for his beauty and his gallantry is such that one could hardly do anything else._

 

_It was against this Southron favorite that Ser Domeric Bolton, Lord Bolton's only son and Heir rode. Ser Domeric had expressed more than once his nervousness to ride the tilt so publicly, for his father is a demanding man. Yet despite this, he showed no sign of fear in any of his jousts nor as he brought his horse to the lists. As stoic as our father ever was, but with the small, kind smile on his face that so often distinguishes him from others, Ser Domeric is a true son of the North._

 

_To great cheering they faced off. One knight on an almost delicate, nimble stallion as golden as the roses of Highgarden and with a pale green scarf tucked into his gorget sent all the way from Highgarden so that he might have his sister, the Lady Margaery's, favor. His silver armor nearly blinding in the sun, the Southron knight waved confidently to the crowd. His stallion was caparisoned in a long blanket that cloaked it from the end of its neck all around beneath its tail in green silk decorated with a repeated pattern of three golden roses joined together._

 

_Ser Domeric waved to no-one for I could see his hands clenched upon his reigns in nerves. He rides a great stallion gifted to him by his aunt, Lady Dustin, and it is the pride of the Ryswell stables. A blood bay, its coat gleams like burgundy velvet, as dark as Dornish wine. Its mane and tail are as black as coal and flow thickly in waves over its neck and behind it._

 

_While Ser Loras' saddle and bridle were gleaming pale in the sun with what I hope was brass ornaments worked into the golden-brown leather, Ser Domeric's horse bore a modestly sized, practical blanket of pale rose-colored wool. Over that his saddle and bridle are black and made in the Northern way, but chased in beautifully worked silver covered in the scrollwork and brambles of our people._

 

_There they stood, the Pageantry of the South facing off against the Pride of the North. As they rode down the lists to face each other, the sun seemed to absorb into the dark matte gray of Ser Domeric's armor. It caught and gleamed in little running lines where the scrollwork had been engraved on the plate. Many times they rode against each other. Lances broke, shields rattled, armor clanged, but neither man fell._

 

_My Prince says that Ser Domeric's mastery of the saddle is what won him the day. Ser Loras attempted to use his skill to strike Ser Domeric from the saddle, but it was to no avail. Ser Domeric noticed and the Bolton Heir shifted with his horse, looking as if they were both one body and mind, and then the Knight of Flowers was knocked from his steed…._

 

"Oh, Mother, isn't it _exciting_?!" Sansa asked, her tone full of awe and delight.

 

Cat managed to push aside her gut-clenching worry for her firstborn and smile at her daughter. Sansa, she knew, was worried for Robb as well. It was just that the romance of Lyarra's letter about the final day of the Tourney had pushed her temporarily into a state of girlish excitement that didn't admit outside distractions. Cat was glad to have it so. Sansa's delight was a distraction she sorely needed.

 

"I find it very kind of Ser Domeric that he placed the crown upon the empty chair that the Queen sets for her daughter." Bran offered from here he sat on the floor with his own letters out. "It's sad that the Princess Myrcella never got crowned the Queen of Love and Beauty in person."

 

"It was a wise move, politically and ethically." Cat's uncle added from where he sat.

 

He'd usurped the large, padded chair that Ned usually used when he visited her solar. Currently the Blackfish had his booted feet propped up on a footstool that Sansa had embroidered in a circle of multi-colored trouts using scrap thread. Her Uncle Brynden had been rather tickled to see that, due to spacing and Sansa's talent level at the time, she'd misjudged and stitched a red trout so close to the black trout that it looked like they were butting heads. He'd firmly decided that it was his footstool at that point. Cat was fairly sure it would vanish into his quarters shortly, but she hardly begrudged it.

 

"Who can tell me how?" Cat's own chin rested on Rickon's curls as her littlest one slept in her arms.

 

She should put him to bed but it was a _comfort_ to hold him. Robb had ridden off with a good number of men. She knew they were good men. She knew they were loyal. There was no telling what they rode into, however, and while part of her appreciated her son's caution in leaving the Blackfish to make sure the castle had a seasoned defender another part of her felt it foolish. Uncle Brynden was one of the greatest knights of his generation. He'd fought many wars. Robb should have taken his great-uncle with him.

 

"It isn't to ease tensions between the Crown and the North." Sansa frowned, but immediately set herself working to answer; ever eager to please even now that her lessons had shifted. "Father is the King's best friend. Maybe he did it to appease the Lannisters?"

 

"I think he felt sorry for the Queen because she lost her babe, and because the Princess and Prince Tommen are dead and their bodies got broken to pieces." Bran offered.

 

"I don't care. It was just so _gallant_." Sansa sighed in delight and Cat hid a smile.

 

She was pleased to see her daughter learning more of how to run a household. She had been relieved and willing to amend her ideas of the education that Sansa needed when she saw how frustrated her daughter was becoming at the gaps between what she knew and what her half-sister was being taught. It was necessary to do so. It had also left Cat thinking uncomfortably of her father's own efforts to teach her to live up to their family and her duties and realize she needed to do more to help Sansa do the same. It was nice to see that Sansa was still her happy little dreamer underneath her new lessons.

 

"Uncle Blackfish," Sansa turned towards her great-uncle with large blue eyes. "You met Ser Domeric. What's he like?"

 

Her uncle put on a serious, thoughtful face, but Cat caught a twinkle in his river blue eyes as he considered his answer.

 

"Ser Domeric Bolton's a solid young man. A good knight as well, and has the makings of a hell of a jouster. He might even be the best rider I've ever seen."

 

"He didn't do so well facing Prince Oberyn or you at Riverrun." Bran pointed out.

 

"He was nervous, lad." The Blackfish snorted. "He'd never jousted against anyone with a reputation before. He did well enough to win the King's Tourney, didn't he?"

 

Bran smiled and Sansa sat forward.

 

"You should see the drawings Lyarra sent me!"

 

Cat felt something in her chest tighten but pushed it away. She would likely never cease to resent her husband's bastard. She didn't blame herself for doing so. Who would? The child was a living representation of the shame an otherwise good man had heaped on her.

 

Despite that, Lyarra had done no personal wrong to her. _Family, Duty, Honor… and Humility_ . To truly live up to the words of her family she was going to have to embrace the last. Lyarra Martell was a princess in the most secure and, currently, most _influential_ House in Westeros. The smallfolk were ready to deify the Martells and that was _dangerous_. Given the weak position the King was in it was time to start solidifying new alliances for the good of the North and the good of her children.

 

Ned's letter to her had stressed that he wanted to see their daughters safely betrothed quickly for their own good. Prince Joffrey was likely destined for the Wall, but until the Queen produced a healthy son they could not be sure that Tywin Lannister wouldn't act to keep his blood on the throne when the King died. A King whose health was greatly impacted by rich food and heavy drinking.

 

To this Cat had realized that her own fears that the North might not accept her children were justified, but not simply for the reasons she'd feared. Her determination to raise her children in the Seven's Light had, in her mind, been for the good of their souls… and perhaps she'd still held a few foolish dreams of being the force that civilized and saved the savage North. A fool's hope.

In every meaning of the word, Cat thought and shivered as she watched her daughter show off the dramatic watercolor of Ser Domeric unhorsing Ser Loras. Lyarra had painted it to make the darkly armored boy atop his great warhorse look like some kind of god of battle. The next was a sketch in charcoal of Ser Domeric, Ned, and Arya all throwing knives. Cat didn't really approve of the image. She did understand its purpose. The addition of the candid portrait that showed off the young man's fair skin, fine bone structure, and hauntingly pale eyes just confirmed it.

 

Ned had gone so far as to invite Ser Domeric and his intolerable father to Winterfell to visit after Ned returned. An invitation that would _only_ be made if Ned had certain intentions. Given that Sansa was now getting letters from all of her siblings and her father mentioning what a fine young knight Ser Domeric was there could be little doubt as to what he intended. Roose Bolton would be coming to Winterfell to discuss a betrothal.

 

On one hand, Cat disliked that idea. Roose Bolton was a ghoul. Sending her dearest and sweetest child into his home did not appeal to her at all.

 

On the _other_ hand? The man was ambitious and the Boltons had always chafed at being unacknowledged by the Starks. This was acknowledgement. It was also a gesture of respect, and while Roose Bolton would have to be watched closely, the man was notorious for protecting his own. Domeric was his only Heir and Domeric's wife would be the only avenue to continue his line as Lord Bolton himself had made no noise about taking another wife after his failed attempt to gain the bastard's hand. Politically it made sense for him to treat their daughter very well, and the man had a political mind. If the boy himself was also worthy and decent it would make all the difference as he'd be an extra layer of protection.

 

"He's a handsome young man." Cat observed, and then stood up. "However, it's well past time many of you were asleep. Sansa, I will be in to speak to you in your chamber after I've put Rickon to bed."

 

"Yes, Mother." Sansa smiled and carefully rolled her letters and drawings up as she left.

 

"Come on, lad, tomorrow you have work to do."

 

"Yes, Ser Blackfish. More training with the rings?"

 

" _Only_ after I'm satisfied with your swordplay. Your right side is still far too unguarded. I'll not train you out of using your left hand as your swordhand, you're a Northerner, but I want _progress_."

 

Cat left to the sound of her uncle giving her son instruction and felt something in her chest clench. It was all she could have ever wanted, to have one of her sons as her own Uncle Brynden's squire. Getting her son into bed was an easy task, as tired as he already was. Then, it was a balm to her soul to just sit for a few minutes and brush her daughter's hair, talking gaily about tourneys and champions. It would have been perfect had both children not asked after Robb.

 

She understood that he'd sent no letter. He was riding hard for the coast. He'd likely stop along the way and gather men from a bannerman or two, if he felt it necessary, and House Forrester would certainly have men out as well as Clan Wull and Clan Ash. That should have reassured her, but it did not.

 

"Cat?"

 

"Uncle Brynden." Catelyn turned and found the Blackfish leaning against the wall near her own quarters and walked over to let him enfold her in an embrace. "By the Father and Warrior, I wish you were with him."

 

She wished her husband was home to comfort her and go to their son's aid, or - better yet - to send her boy home, but it wasn't to be.

 

"Your Young Wolf has to prove himself, and twice as much since he's wearing Tully colors, if you take my meaning." Ser Brynden rumbled, leaning back and leaving an arm draped around Cat's shoulders. "He's made inroads so far. I was raised with the Seven, but I've seen the Old Gods at work now, too. I'll never forget when I realized that crazy Mountain Clansmen and his sick goats could save us from the Greyplague. Sending the Septa off, taking other Heirs as his friends and riding with them; these things will help his rule, Cat."

 

"I know, but he's so young. He's only five-and-ten."

 

"Aye, but that's a man grown by law, or nearly so." Ser Brynden frowned. "Is it four-and-ten or six-and-ten here? In the Riverlands, Crownlands, and Reach it's six-and-ten, but in Dorne it's four-and-ten for both marriage and being a man grown. In the Vale it was four-and-ten until Lord Arryn changed it during the Rebellion."

 

"Things are a little looser in the North." Cat explained. "It's more a matter of practicality than a set law. If a young lord must take over for his father and isn't ready, his family will continue to guide him strongly. If he makes moves to take his position himself, it's usually held that he's as ready as he proves himself to be."

 

"Your son is proving himself now, Cat, let him."

 

Cat sighed and her uncle went on.

 

"Robb and you both wrote Lord Stark about the raiders."

 

"Yes, before Robb left, he sent a letter. I've sent another with more information in it."

 

"I thought you hadn't gotten another letter from Robb?"

 

"I haven't, but I did get a letter from Lord Wull asking for assistance. I sent him word that Robb and a party were on their way there and informed Lord Karstark and Lord Umber that their sons rode with mine."

 

"They've written back?"

 

"Yes, Lord Umber was pleased and said he would keep his men on their toes. Lord Wull said he would lead his men along the coast to defend his people, as did Clan Ash, and that they'll meet him when he gets there. Robb also sent out Ravens to the entire western coastline and even the eastern coastline warning that there's been raiding on along the Sunset Sea and we must be vigilant."

 

"Then all that can be done, has."

 

Cat shook her head at that, but allowed her uncle to offer her another hug. It wasn't very comforting, but it was all the comfort she would get. Thinking back to her husband's letter about the fetid state of King's Landing, Cat paused before she went to bed and changed back into her gown and boots. Wrapping herself in a cloak that Ned had not bothered to take with him, careful to fold the hem up so that it did not drag, she inhaled her husband's comforting scent from the warm fur and walked to her Sept.

 

It was a dark place and foreboding now. With the Septon and Septa gone she was the only one with an urge to tend it. No candles were lit. It was clean, but empty, and the altars were gone. Altars were always property of the Faith, after all. Now there was a bare spot beneath each of the stone reliefs carved into the walls of the Sept that her husband had built for her.

 

Part of Cat longed to replace them. Her piety balked at the idea, however, for altars had to be consecrated by a high ranking Septon and anything she had made would hold no such blessing. It would be an empty gesture. The part of her mind trained by her father in politics also refused, for replacing them after all of the Northerners had seen them removed would revoke some of the approval that she'd earned for herself and her children in seeing the priest and priestess and their Southron trappings gone.

 

Cat knelt in front of the Warrior anyway. She'd written to Lord Manderly in White Harbor after she'd ejected the Septon and Septa. They were of the Seven, after all, and had come from the South long ago. She'd hoped they might provide her some insight. They had done so. It had not reassured her.

 

She knew the Manderlys did not pay their tithes and that had shocked her enough. She'd never realized that there were no Septas or Septons in White Harbor, however. She'd been in the Sept at White Harbor. She'd seen a man in a robe preaching to the assembled from a holy book. Cat had just assumed that the man was a Septon.

 

Instead she'd found out that he was merely one of the faithful in White Harbor. Over more than a thousand years, the Faith of the Manderly's had changed. Instead of following the doctrine and the hierarchy of the Faith, they followed the texts associated with it. Anyone who believed could stand up and preach and your piety was measured by their _adherence_ to the strictures set forth in the Seven Pointed Star and other such backbones of the Faith. Collections were gathered to maintain the public buildings and services offered by the Faith, but who was in charge of them changed every year, with appointments made by Lord Manderly.

 

Cat wasn't sure if she was more shocked or confused. That wasn't how the Seven worked. She'd certainly been raised to think nothing of the sort, and she couldn't help but wonder why the Faith had allowed it.

 

The obvious answer, of course, was that they _couldn't_ stop it. Once the Manderlys went North they were beyond the control of the High Septon and all of his people. The King was hardly going to 'protect the Faith' by risking the allegiance of the North. If he tried to meddle in Northern religious matters that was what would happen.

 

None of that changed the fact that there was no altar and Cat was alone. She knelt on the folded edge of her husband's robe after hanging her torch in a sconce. Then, in the dark, she lit a single lonely candle. Setting it in a little nook in the carving, next to the Warrior's feet, she prayed that her son would come home safe to her and the Warrior would guard and guide him. Then she moved onto the Mother and the Father and prayed further. Eventually she left the candles to safely burn out in their stone niches and took her torch with her back to the castle. There really was nothing to do but try and get some sleep.

 

* * *

 

Oberyn would have preferred his wife invite him into her bed with passionate lovemaking, but he was willing to take being invited _at_ _all_ as a worthy consolation prize. Lyarra was still angry with him, but her willingness to curl up in his arms was a good sign. Loving Ellaria had taught him that, if it was bad enough for her to send him from her bed, he would have to work to come back to it at all. In their early years Oberyn had been forced to grow a great deal and twice she'd returned to Hellholt with their 'Lia.

 

Both times Oberyn had been forced to go back and _plead_ with her to return to him. Doran had refused to take sides and insisted that, unlike her older sisters, 'Lia had a mother who loved her and with whom she should remain if Oberyn was going to drive his paramour away with his temper and unpredictability. At that time Oberyn knew he was still volatile in the two years following his sister's slaughter, and he was no easy man to love. Doran's own griefs in managing Dorne and dealing with Mallario's increasing hostility had been enough for his brother without trying to handle Oberyn's foolishness as well. The children Mellario had given Doran belonged to Dorne, but Oberyn's children were his and Elia's with no other claims upon them. He had no sympathy for Oberyn's plight given his own.

 

Having found himself awake in the dark hours of the morning, Oberyn pressed his face into his wife's curls and silently berated himself. He also, very carefully, slipped his hand down to brush his fingers over the inside of his wife's thighs. This time it wasn't an attempt to arouse and he did not wish her to awaken. Oberyn merely had to make sure that the blood his nightmare had conjured up was absent.

 

It was and he carefully curled his hand over her stomach. The bare, gentle arch between her hip bones was a relief to him. Oberyn didn't doubt he deserved such dreams, however, given what his impulsiveness had risked. He couldn't quite bring himself to _regret_ jumping into the melee despite having received the frustration and irritation of his entire party over it and dealt with a serious tongue lashing on the subject from his uncle. He knew it was entirely possible he'd do it again, save for the promise Lyarra had wrung from him. He still wanted Amory Lorch's death, but he wouldn't rush off to deal it alone. He would honor his word now that it was given, and honor the life he and Lyarra had created. He would go with men he trusted at his side and he would leave his wife well guarded in his absence.

 

Oberyn was half-asleep. His mind had drifted into the past as he recalled the first time he'd accidentally driven his love away. Ellaria was nowhere to be seen and he'd been sitting atop his sand steed yelling at Lord Harmen Uller as the Lord of Hellholt stood atop the walls of his keep refusing Oberyn entry. In the end he'd camped out there for _four_ _days_ before Ellaria had shown up atop the walls with 'Lia in her arms and they'd worked something out… at high volume, and for all the keep to hear. The second time he'd been let in immediately because he'd been willing to grovel without the delay of arguing about it first.

 

Oberyn contented himself that he'd _learned_ something from that. He also knew that he was safe at least from having to yell at the walls of Winterfell. Lyarra could hardly run home as easily as Ellaria had, and they were Marked besides. On top of that, Lyarra was private and wouldn't want their business screamed at the top of their lungs from the battlements.

 

Light passing underneath the bedchamber door from the solar roused Oberyn from his half-slumber. Gwyn crept around in the dark if she came into the solar early. Even she wouldn't be likely to arrive only three hours after midnight, however.

 

Rising to his feet and retrieving his sword, Oberyn slid from bed. It was very unlikely to be a threat, so he let Lyarra sleep for the moment. Instead he carefully cracked the door open. Meeting Ser Ulwyck's black eyes he slipped out into the solar.

 

"You've found something?" He whispered and the man nodded his head.

 

"Word from a brothel down by the docks. Lorch has been there since he fled the melee, laying low, but he's run out of silver and the whores are turning him in. They'll keep him there until we arrive."

 

"Help me dress." Oberyn nodded towards the dressing room, intent on going immediately, then he paused. "Who is awake of the guards?"

 

"Yorin Green, Tavin and Garth Sands, Bryll Wellsly, Evan, Rykk…"

 

Oberyn listened to the list and nodded.

 

"Put Yorin and the Sands twins guarding the Princess' door. Have Wyllam and Rykk in the hallway at either end. Leave those guarding the other doors in place. I want Bryll and Evan with us, as well as Gordyn and Culver. You will come with me as well as Ser Arron and Ser Daemon. Any party larger than that will attract too much attention. Do you have the cloaks and tunics?"

 

"We'll be unidentifiable from a popular Dornish merchant's guardsmen in a quarter hour."

 

"Make it ten minutes." Oberyn ordered as his blood began to fire.

 

Before dawn Rhaenys would have her revenge. Elia and Aegon's killer would have to wait. He still lacked a name, but he knew he remained in the Westerlands and the Gwyn Parren had promised him the truth as soon as she felt Lyarra was safe. In this case, that meant getting his wife and unborn child out of King's Landing. As he could not do so soon enough for his tastes, Oberyn was willing to practice at least that much patience.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra woke because she could smell danger. Strange men who she didn't know. It was all a confused tangle of staring at a door and the sharp scent of the air, and then she went from awake but confused to truly awake and setting up alone in a bed she had been sharing with her husband. Ghost, who had not been in their bedchamber with them the night before, was now standing by the door with her lips raised from her curved white teeth in a silent snarl. Her white fur stood on end and Lyarra blinked at the image presented to her as she set steel to flint and lit the candle on the bedside table.

 

"Ghost?" Lyarra stood up. "What is it?"

 

Ghost scratched at the door roughly, begging to be let out. Lyarra felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she moved. Without really thinking she reached for the sword that Oberyn had given her as a wedding gift after wrapping her dressing robe around herself and sliding her feet into her half-boots without thought. She wasn't quite dressed, but she didn't want to be barefoot if something was wrong and something was most definitely wrong. Ghost should not be gouging claw marks in the door of their guest chambers. Oberyn should have been in bed with her in the bare hours of dawn when light was just a red sliver on the horizon. Actually, this was the time when Gwyn should have just been slipping into the solar with something for Lyarra to eat so that the nausea clinging to the back of Lyarra's throat didn't roar to life through the rest of her body.

 

A man's shrill scream suddenly filled the air. Without thinking Lyarra threw the bolt on the door and ran through the solar. The door stood wide and an unfamiliar man in shabby boiled leathers lay screaming on the floor clutching at his groin as blood spurted from between his fingers around the plain, polished oak handle of one of Gwyn's large kitchen knives. Ghost rushed past him and into the hallway while Lyarra acted without thinking and slid her sword through the neck of the fallen intruder.

 

As Ghost moved Lyarra almost felt half-asleep. Not in the sense of a resting mind, but in that she was still tied closely with her direwolf. The dreams she'd brushed off, pushing away in her mind because she was not ready to deal with their significance, hovered and superimposed themselves on her waking world. Time synchronized along with Ghost herself, and Lyarra could feel, hear, see, and smell more than she should be able to. Hearing and sight she pushed away, needing her own, but the sharp tang of blood in the air excited her and she felt riled by the sounds of running steps and a familiar voice further down the hall.

 

Scrambling past the dead man, Lyarra's half-formed astonishment that he'd gotten past the guards was undone. Yorin Greene, who'd once been one of Oberyn's seemingly endless stream of lovers, was laying slumped against the wall with a crossbow bolt buried in his left eye. The Sand twins, two doughty middle-aged guards who grew up on the Greenblood and were nearly impossible to distinguish from each other, were laying with bolts buried in their chests. One was moving slightly, but the other was still.

 

" _Walda_?!" Lyarra cried and tried to rush forward, but Ghost beat her to it.

 

A full grown man in poorly tended mail and boiled leathers was grappling with Lyarra's friend. The lady-in-waiting wore one of the simpler dresses that Gwyn often directed her into wearing when both were down in the kitchens. One of Gwyn's large bushel baskets lay cast aside on the floor, a broken crockery half-fallen out of it and leaking broth, along with a sliced loaf scattered over the floor. A sword had been thrust into the basket, and caught in it before being shoved aside.

 

Walda was holding her own in wrestling the man despite being but a girl and him full grown. She had him by one wrist with his other arm caught against her side, and while the way he was twisting a handful of flesh at her waist looked terribly painful, the Frey maiden wasn't letting him go. Ghost slammed into both of them, knocking Walda and her attacker to the ground. Walda had the sense to curl up, wrapping her arms around her head, and just letting Ghost do as she wished.

 

The man was not _nearly_ so smart. Instead of attempting to protect himself he tried to scuttle away on his hands and feet. It was a foolish move as it allowed Ghost to use Walda as a platform to sprint from and land atop him. His scream was cut off in a wet gurgle as the Direwolf's teeth snapped shut tight on his throat.

 

The sweet copper taste _flooded_ Lyarra's mouth and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Or was that the fur on Ghost's raised hackles? She wasn't sure and her ability to care about that was rapidly waning. Everything around her excited her. She felt her own urge to run, to hunt, to _kill_. The desire to see the blood of the enemies of her pack spread out over her muzzle/face/hands was overwhelming. Her blood was boiling.

 

"Walda?!" Lyarra cried out again and ran to her friend, but Walda just waved wildly for her to move on.

 

"One of them is chasing Gwyn!" Walda cried. "That way, down the hallway, she led him off towards the weapons gallery!"

 

Lyarra took off like a shot, sword in hand and her mind bent on her task.

 

"Lyarra!" Walda wailed behind her. "I meant _to call more guards_!"

 

The Princess ignored her completely, sprinting past a crossbow with a severed string lay in the middle of the hallway and where four unfamiliar bodies in shabby armor lay. They'd been felled by her guards. She passed the bodies of two more Dornish guards and felt her chest constrict even as, in the back of her mind, Ghost's savaging of her own opponent kept her blood hot. She'd known these men for nearly three months. She'd eaten with them, learned their names, knew of their families. Her temper spiked and her blood boiled furter and she didn't think. Her wolf's blood had taken hold over her common sense. Behind her she felt the man Ghost was struggling against give way to death and then the wild satisfaction as Ghost set her teeth and pulled with all her might, tearing his throat out clear the the white bones at the back.

 

The sun had crept higher leaving a band of golden-orange light over everything it touched through the Red Keep's windows. Lyarra raced through these bands of fiery light across the gallery, and towards a growing noise of clattering, cursing, and Gwyn's voice raised at its mocking, taunting best. The sound was strangely dual; as if she was hearing it through two sets of ears. One was sharper, but further away, and one closer and duller. As she crossed into the gallery of abandoned weapons that she'd examined a couple of days prior with her husband and ladies she found the shutters thrown open and the dark, low-ceilinged, room bathed in bloody morning light.

 

"Fat Amory Lorch! Too old to even murder children now!" Gwyn's taunt carried to her and Lyarra blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light as the words echoed across her sense.

 

What she saw caught her heart in the throat. A man of middling height and a year or two Oberyn's senior was struggling to swing a one-handed sword at Gwyn. The little blonde's hair was bound up in a white kerchief and she was wearing a plain unbleached linen kirtle under a rough homespun brown gown and thick white cotton apron. She had no weapon in her hands, but she had put the wooden horse and its overly fancy armor between herself and the knight. She was dancing from side to side and back and forth, forcing him to try and stab her over and around it ineffectively as his anger made him sloppy and his heavy pot belly impeded him.

 

The man wore only light boiled armor. In the back of her mind the training Lyarra had begged from her father, Ser Rodrik, her brothers, Theon, and every other man she knew whispered that this was likely to slip more easily into the castle. He was fat and sweating heavily through the thin wisps of brown and gray hair covering an egg-like head. His beard and mustache were flecked with spittle and sweat was rolling in rivers down the rolls of fat at the back of his neck above his armor.

 

Lyarra could smell the stink of him mixed in with fresh blood. There was no blood in this room, but it hardly mattered. She'd found her friend. She'd found her quarry. The taste of blood was hot on her tongue and _instinct_ \- hers or Ghost's - was winning out.

 

"Hold still you stinking cunt!" He raged and tried to race around the large armor stand.

 

Gwyn ducked between the wooden horse's legs and out of the way, avoiding his strike and tearing the white cotton 'kerchief off of her head. It unfolded into a large, thin cloth, as Lyarra knew it would, and she threw it directly into Lorch's face, blinding him. Then she shoved with all her might, turning the top-heavy armor stand over and forcing the man to scramble backwards.

 

"Gwyn, run for help!" Lyarra screamed and raced forward, raising her own sword to engage since she was the one who was armed.

 

"No, Lyarra, _run_!" Gwyn turned to face her and screamed back, her face twisted in fear. "You-."

 

Gwyn fell with a pained shriek as Amory Lorch took advantage of her distraction to lunge at her. He drove the tip of his sword into Gwyn's thigh with a savage snarl. Lyarra had crossed the room by that point and was on him in an instant. The bright clang and the ringing of steel meeting steel filled the gallery and rang through the open courtyard beyond.

 

"Swine!" Lyarra called out at the man as their swords crossed and she stared up into his piggy, bloodshot eyes and the fat, almost flat, upturned nose they were set too closely to. " _Coward_!"

 

"I'm brave enough to kill _you_ , you fucking bitch!" He snarled back and kicked out at her as she let his sword slip off of hers.

 

Under normal circumstances it would have been easy to dance away. It would have been _simple_ to slip aside and then bring her sword up and into his side and then his heart through the gap in his armor underneath his armpit. Under normal circumstances, however, Lyarra wasn't three moons pregnant. She'd eaten nothing that morning. As she raced about and met him strike for strike, Lyarra found herself growing dizzy and had to fight just to stay on her feet and counter her stronger opponent's blows.

 

Still, Amory Lorch had long past the days when he was one of the Mountain's ablest men. Sweating and panting for breath he had his own handicaps. Lyarra brought her sword up, sweeping a clumsy thrust aside, and then swept it back. She caught him across the jaw, leaving a slash deep enough to show bone.

 

"Bastard!" He shrieked, and scrambled back, but not before aiming a slash at Lyarra that required all of her strength to counter.

 

Lyarra wasn't Gwyn. She didn't jape. She didn't mock. She was _Ned Stark's_ daughter and silently and with great concentration, she kept her feet and used his distraction to drive her foot up into his groin. The softness she impacted said the man hadn't the intelligence to guard his balls unless in full plate.

 

Unfortunately for Lyarra her kick only bent him double for a second. He managed to push aside her next sword blow with a steel vambrace. Then his anger at being kicked in the balls gave the fat murderer a second wind. Lyarra had to scramble this way and that, struggling against her lightheadedness to land her own blows and to avoid his. She was faster, but her speed was handicapped by pregnancy symptoms. His strength remained even if he was a sweating, gasping wreck of a man gone to seed. They were frightfully evenly matched and Lyarra's strength was waning as her dizziness grew.

 

Just as Lyarra was truly beginning to fear for the outcome past the din of her battle lust, Lady Walda Frey entered the fight. She had no training, but she did have a _lifetime_ of hard work to her credit. A girl who showed her Crakehall blood in her broad frame also carried with it no small measure of that family's famed strength. Running into the gallery to see Gwyn off of her feet and Lyarra fighting, Walda's first instinct was the same that had led her to tackling Gwyn's attacker when the man had shoved a sword at the smaller blonde and Gwyn had blocked it with her basket.

 

With a scream of rage as she saw all of the happiness she'd found, the affection and the _respect_ she'd been shown for the first time in her life, flashing before her eyes, Walda Frey reached out and snatched up a mace from a nearby display. The pernach in her hand had been made gaudy by the addition of silly brass details and a trailing tassel of multi-colored silk but beneath it was all solid blued steel from Braavos. With a roar worthy of a river in flood she brought the mace against the small of Amory Lorch's back with all of her considerable strength.

 

The man temporarily lost all feeling in his legs with a cry and went to his knees with everything turning to pins and needles. Lyarra wasted no time and drove her sword tip against his chest. She quickly discovered he wore a good mail shirt beneath as her sword was turned, and the force of her own blow made her stagger to the side to grip a pillar and regain her balance.

 

Lyarra wasn't worried, however. In the back of her mind, where instinct was still snarling and howling over all thought, she was aware that more than Walda was about to enter the fight. Later the princess would panic because she'd known there were two more men who'd been down another corridor. She'd be frightened by the implications of realizing that she had no doubts that her direwolf had been off killing them while she pursued Lorch. At that moment Lyarra was simply satisfied by the reality at hand.

 

Blood running from her jaws, Ghost rejoined the fight. Amory Lorch staggered back to his feet, swiping his sword at Walda to make her stumble backwards as his left leg dragged badly and he lurched about in an attempt to escape. Silently running from the dark of the hallway, Ghost's fur was stained red by the rising sun, and Amory Lorch let out a scream of fear as he watched the creature run straight for him. Walda chose that moment to strike his sword as hard as she could with her mace, sending it skidding from his sweat-slick hand. Out of instinct, he raised his bare shieldarm to guard himself.

 

It was a _mistake_ . Ghost seized him by his wrist, dragging him back down to the ground and savaging his hand. Amory Lorch began to scream in agony, pounding at Ghost's back. It did him little good. When she was full grown the direwolf would be able to tear off a man's arm like a man tears a drumstick from a goose. At _that_ moment, she left great rents in his flesh and broke bones as she shook her head from side to side.

 

Lyarra stood up straighter against the pillar, ready to rejoin the fight, only to be stopped by a noise like the screaming of the damned. Gwyn had retained her feet and grabbed one of the heavy, short curved swords used by the pirates of the Stepstones from its display. Struggling and limping forward Gwyn Parren brought the blade down so hard it shoved itself between flagstones and pushed through the bones of the man's sword arm, pinning his forearm to the floor in a great spurting wash of blood.

 

With a cry of her own, Walda brought her mace down on each of his legs, breaking his knees and pinning him in place as Ghost retreated, his severed hand clasped in her grinning teeth as she continued to shake her head and fling blood in every direction. A finger would later be found to have landed atop a beam. Lyarra wouldn't learn of that detail until years later when servants reported on the cleaning of the room during a great reorganization of the Red Keep. Efforts would be made to keep her husband from claiming it as a souvenir. They would fail.

 

With a sound more like an animal roar than any girl of three-and-ten should have been able to produce Gwyn reached for the leather belt at her hip and pulled from it a heavy, honed cleaver. Why she hadn't reached for it before, Lyarra didn't know, save perhaps because she was panicked and pressed for time. Gwyn pulled it from its place at her belt then, though, and raising it above her head as she fell to her knees at Amory Lorch's side she brought it down directly in the center of his face, caving his teeth and nose in. Her second blow crossed the first one, destroying his eyes.

 

" _Lyarra_?" Walda cried out. "Princess?"

 

Lyarra lurched back to her own feet as her lady-in-waiting came to her side and helped support her. Lyarra allowed it even as she reached down to pet Ghost's head. The fury was leaving her. The taste of blood was fading and her senses were no longer split and echoing inside her skull. Lyarra rather desperately wanted to sit down.

 

"I'm alright." Lyarra rasped, tired and dizzy, but not pained. Finally thinking she brought a hand over her belly. "I'm fine, I feel fine. Gwyn? Gwyn, you need to stop-."

 

Gwyn's eyes were wide and her face was streaked with blood. Her blonde hair was wild around her shoulders and down her back, spread out in a halo turned true-gold by the rising sun behind her and streaked with the blood that was splashing back upon her as she struck at the fallen knight again and again. Swallowing Lyarra moved forward, her voice gentle as she took in the way that Gwyn's blue eyes were looking fixedly down at her target with her teeth bared.

 

"Gwyn, he's _dead_!" Walda cried out just as Ghost shook her head playfully, her tail wagging and her prize held out towards Lyarra in pride.

 

" _Princess_!" Ser Barristan the Bold rushed up the stairs, his sword in hand and his face wreathed in determination. "I'm here, ladies, you must… run...?"

 

Lyarra stared at the famed knight. Then, in silence, she looked back at Walda. Walda looked at her, blood spattered and a little lost even in triumph. Walda was lost because of it, Lyarra decided after a second's reflection. Her cheerful blonde friend was not used to winning in any way. Not knowing what to say Lyarra squeezed Walda's shoulder and then looked back up at the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Hopefully he would have some idea of what to do.

 

Gwyn had stopped screaming, but she was still hacking away with the cleaver. Amory Lorch's face was utterly destroyed. In fact, by the moment it was moving closer to being mincedin a way that was painfully reminiscent of the filling of some of Gwyn's pies. Lyarra felt her stomach heave and Walda caught her hair as she turned into a corner and began to be helplessly sick.

Behind her, Lyarra heard Ser Barristan lowering himself and his elaborate armor slowly down onto his knees. In a calm, gentle, voice he began to speak.

 

"Lady Gwyn, it's alright now. No-one can hurt you or the Princess. Your enemy is dead, a murderer brought to justice, and a threat vanquished. You're quite safe…"

 

* * *

 

His long night's watch outside the Prince's door was ended, and Barristan Selmy couldn't have been more relieved. He'd never truly forgiven the Lannister guards for their honorless brutality during the Sack of King's Landing. Though the redcloaks assigned by Lord Tywin to watch his grandson's movements and curtail them when necessary were not objectionable in and of themselves, he never felt he could relax around them. Not that he ever truly relaxed on duty, but he loathed the feeling that he must not turn his back on nor remove his attention fully away from his allies.

 

Still, other than a screaming fit about halfway through the night because the boy felt like demanding to be let out and then throwing things at the door when he was not, it wasn't that bad. He'd certainly had worse nights on guard over Aerys. He missed what Rhaegar might have been. He missed the potential for a peaceful dynastic transition that Aegon represented. He did not miss the Mad King.

 

He took the long way to White Sword Tower, however. He preferred it, for it gave the Lord Commander time to relax his mind before trying to take his rest. Of late he had a great dealon his mind.

 

Barristan was just… _bothered_ by a few things. Not furious or disillusioned or sad as he often was by what happened in the Royal Family. Instead he had niggling annoyances itching at his mind. For instance, he'd yet to find a single Westerlander in the castle who'd tell him what the rest of the words were to Lady Gwyn's barely-started song. They looked downright nervous, but _why_? What about a simple song could be that worrying?

 

He'd found a minstrel who knew the tune, but not the words, and he'd told him it was a song about House Parren. The fact that the current House Parren was the result of a Baratheon/Lannister marriage made it a little less confusing. After all, any reference to such a marriage being happy might well send Queen Cersei into a rage. If only Barristan's gutagreed with that assessment. A life as long as his and with as much battle and strife taught a body to listen to their instincts.

 

Then there was Ser Jaime. Barristan was often left exasperated and disappointed by the man. He'd had so much potential as a boy and Barristan blamed himself a little for not guarding him better. He blamed Ser Jaime himself for breaking his vows as he did, but he also blamed Aerys for taking such a hopeful, bright young knight and ruining him.

 

When he'd come to them he'd idolized Arthur and Barristan had held such hopes to see this boy who wanted nothing but to be a perfect knight get a chance to do so. Instead the boy had looked at them with shocked eyes when Rhaella's screams filled the hallways, and after seeing his first peasant boy burned alive all had been lost. In his darkest moments, Barristan thought that they all deserved to have lost the lad in such a way. In obeying their vows to Aerys, how many others had they broken?

 

Still… he misliked how Ser Jaime had acted when it had come out that he'd procured a midwife to treat the Queen. He felt no remorse for the chewing out the man had gotten for not having called a real maester as soon as the Queen began to bleed, given what had come of it. They needed a sane Heir so badly…

 

That said? He supposed he could understand. The Queen had, according to Ser Jaime, complained before of bleeding following … the execution of her wifely duties. Ser Jaime was just defending his sister's privacy. He was even defending the King's as well since it didn't need to be let out in public that the King's beddings of the Queen were just that violent.

 

It was just… the way Ser Jaime had frozen at first. Ser Barristan had been in the room with the King, Ned Stark, Lord Tywin, and Lord Tyrion when it had all been discussed. He'd almost swear he'd seen Ser Jaime's hand drift towards his sword when the King confronted him. Of course, at that point the Imp had begun to talk and his attention had shifted. For someone whose own father dismissed him so, Lord Tyrion spoke eloquently, quickly, and well. He'd been the one to adequately explain the Queen's embarrassment, Ser Jaime's protectiveness, and how the miscarriage had been mistaken for simple bleeding until it had reached a critical point at the tourney.

 

It as the lion knight's brief moment of frozen fear that was on Ser Barristan's mind when he heard the first scream. Instinct had him moving before he registered that he was running. Thankfully, though age was kind to no man, an active lifestyle and stubborn training meant that taking the stairs into the courtyard was no great feat. It was a time for running.

 

Once there he stared in shock at the sight of the Princess Lyarra's lady-in-waiting, the same one whose favor he had accidentally forgotten to return and was currently resting in the form of a coiled blue ribbon in his pocket, falling upon the floor as a fat knight sank the first four inches of his sword tip into her thigh as he made a stupid sword thrust that over-extended his good arm. Barristan cried out for all of them to cease, but it was lost over the clatter of the Princess herself rushing onto the scene and engaging the knight with a sword of her own.

 

Barristan did the only thing any true knight could have done. He ran down one set of stairs, around to another set of stairs, and began to try and get as quickly as possible to the beleaguered ladies. It was no easy task as the odd position and design of the area forced him to go up three flights of stairs, down another, and then back to get from where he was to where they were. By the time he arrived, he found a scene he did not expect.

 

He was left in shaken silence with the girls, much to his later shame, at the sight of Amory Lorch's mangled body. A gentle lady such as Gwyn Parren hacking at the face of a dead man was rather disturbing, after all, even to a hardened knight. Later, however, he'd decide it was fitting. The little princess Barristan had once dandled on his knee had been avenged at last.

 

"Lord Commander Barristan?" The Princess Lyarra turned to him after she was done emptying her stomach.

 

Lady Walda had helped her princess hold her hair back and supported her when she was unsteady on her feet. Barristan was hardly surprised by Lord Stark's daughter being sick. A first battle left more grown men losing their suppers than one would expect, even among hardened warriors. It spoke to her constitution that she'd done anything at all beyond scream at such a threat, let alone having done so much to dispatch it _herself_.

 

Not that she was alone. Lady Walda had set her mace aside, but there was enough blood on it to proclaim it had seen use. Likewise, the lady's sword was not unblooded. Lady Gwyn's cleaver, after he'd convinced her to let go of it and sit back a few feet away from the body on a clean patch of floor, was covered from tip to end in blood and brains and skin. Even the direwolf was not its usual pristine, white self. The beast was clutching a human hand in its mouth. The hand was missing two fingers. The half-grown direwolf wagged its tail once in his direction and then sat on its haunches.

 

"You Grace." He sketched a short bow out of habit. "If you've been attacked, we must get you to safety."

 

"We _were_ attacked, my guards are dead in the hallway and there are more of Ser Amory Lorch's men there."

 

"Then it is imperative-."

 

"Gwyn, he's dead, you can stop killing him!"

 

Barristan couldn't quite help himself. He turned to look at that. He found Walda on her knees by the corpse, gently wrapping her arms around her friend and easing the flesh, blood, and brain-soaked cleaver from the girl's limp fingers and trying to coax Lady Gwyn back to her feet as she rose from the expanding puddle of blood around the man's corpse. She'd apparently crawled back while he wasn't looking.

 

"I-I want his head…" Lady Gwyn said weakly. "To show Prince Oberyn."

 

"There's really not enough left to bother with. Prince Oberyn will be happy we're all safe and he's dead. That's good enough. It's alright. Lyarra's okay. I'm okay... " Walda soothed in her sweet, high pitched voice.

 

_"Lyarra!"_

 

Ser Barristan the Bold wasn't sure if he was relieved or wanted to throw up his hands in exasperation as yet another piece of chaos arrived.

 

"Oberyn!" Princess Lyarra called and Barristan watched as the Red Viper charged into the room. "Where _were_ you?"

 

He was dressed in very plain boiled leathers, had no cloak, but very plainly had his sword belted at his waist. He was also carrying a bloody spear. Ser Barristan hoped that this wasn't some kind of palace coup and everyone was too polite to tell the old man that he'd just been in the wrong part of the damned countryside while _ANOTHER_ King had been slaughtered.

 

"Lyarra, are you well? Is the babe? What happened?" He demanded, his accent thick as he rushed up, took her into his arms, and then pushed her back to begin running his hands over her. "I was lured into a trap with claims that Rhaenys' killer was being held in a brothel to face me, but when I got there I found only three dead whores and a handful of the sorriest excuses for knights I've ever faced."

 

"Lorch wasn't there because he was _here_."

 

" _What_?"

 

The white direwolf cheerfully shoved the hand in its mouth against one of the Red Viper's hands. On instinct, he took the offering before looking down. Then he looked down at it, pulled a face, and cast the hand aside. Turning, his black eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he took in the mangled corpse and hacked-up face of the body on the floor. Ghost the direwolf obligingly rushed off after the hand, picked it up, and brought it back. This time the princess took it and tossed it out into the courtyard. The white wolf took off after it again, vanishing down the same stairway Barristan had arrived from.

 

" _That_ is what is left of Amory Lorch, Your Grace." Ser Barristan clarified helpfully.

 

There would be no identifying the corpse from its face after all. It had no face. It had very little head. A well-weighted cleaver was an effective weapon.

 

"Did you?"

 

"Not I, Prince Oberyn."

 

"Lyarra did you-?"

 

"It was a group effort." Gwyn Parren croaked and then made a soft noise and Lady Walda gasped.

 

Turning, Barristan felt his own face drain. So busy was he in seeing to the Princess he hadn't looked overhard at the other girls; not even while calming Lady Gwyn down initially. The blood drenching the Lady Gwyn's skirts was not largely from her attack on Lorch. Instead it was dripping from the slit in her dress where Lorch's blade had sunk into her thigh. No longer spurred on by terror, the girl had slumped against Lady Walda, who'd caught her weight by instinct as the girl swooned.

 

"Gwyn!" The Princess cried and rushed forward, her husband at her side. "Oberyn, he stabbed her in the leg with his sword. It's my fault, I distracted her-."

 

"You saved her." Lady Walda argued. "She didn't have a weapon and could only run from him, Lyarra, it's not your fault."

 

"My Prince!" Two more Dornish knights rushed into the room, both panting.

 

"How the fuck are you so bloody fast at your age?" Ser Ulwyck Uller demanded, wheezing as he stood with his sword in hand before letting out a shocked curse. "Seven Hells, someone killed that fucker but good. Who in the Gods’ Good Graces was he?"

 

"Amory Lorch." Barristan had a feeling he was going to be repeating that a lot.

 

" _Good_!"

 

Ser Barristan resisted the urge to cuff the younger man on the back of the head. It wasn't his prerogative. If he'd been a member of the Kingsguard, however, he'd have done it with no hesitation. Ser Ulwyck Uller was _not_ helping.

 

"Maester?" Ser Daemon turned, halfway out the door already.

 

"Get the Maester with the Highgarden party, they're not due to leave until tomorrow morning!"

 

"Yes, Prince Oberyn!" And off he ran.

 

Meanwhile, Prince Oberyn had swung the Lady Gwyn back up into his arms.

 

"Ser Ulwyck, assemble the rest of the guards and check on the whole party. Lord Stark isn't here, but some of his men are, get them and add them to our guard rotations. Compress the quarters both groups are in and set up constant guard rotations in case there is another attack."

 

"Yes-."

 

"And find Lady Arya! If she's with her dance master, bring him as well, but find her and bring her and her direwolf up to my solar."

 

The other knight took off running again as more Dornishmen arrived and Prince Oberyn rushed off, calling for others to follow him and ordering Ser Deziel Dalt - who had apparently just been awoken from slumber after taking the early-evening, late night portion of the watch - to stay at the Princess' side along with Ser Arron. The latter had just arrived, sweating and panting from a run, as well and was swearing a blue streak.

 

"I shall discover how they gained entry into the Red Keep." Ser Barristan decided that, at this point, he was on clean-up duty again. "I will not rest until this matter has been fully investigated."

"See that you don't." Were the Red Viper's final words.

 

"I can't leave yet, Ser Deziel, Ser Arron, Ghost-."

 

Ghost the white direwolf chose that moment to lope up the stairs, Amory Lorch's hand proudly clamped in her jaws. Ser Barristan realized with something like dark amusement that the animal had thought it being tossed away meant that it was playing fetch. This time when the wolf brought then hand to its mistress she took it, paused, and then held it out in his direction. Her direwolf looked rather disappointed.

 

"As part of the investigation?"

 

"... Of course, Your Grace." He accepted the grizzly article and bowed lightly. "Forgive me for not arriving sooner, and that this breach in security has cost some of your guards their lives and endangered that of yours and your ladies. You should not have been put in such danger without guarantee of salvation."

 

"I'm a Stark by birth and a Martell by marriage, Ser Barristan." The Princess paused and he stared as he watched her raise her chin in pride, her fear and whatever else she was feeling carefully hidden behind the mask of her beauty. "I am perfectly capable of saving _myself_."

 

A smile crossed his face involuntarily and Ser Barristan offered her the deepest of bows in response before setting the hand down on Amory Lorch's distorted chest. Apparently a blow from the mace the Lady Walda had set aside had done the damage at some point. He took a second to stare into the ravaged, concave mass of brains blood, and bits of bone and flesh that now served as Amory Lorch's face. Barristan felt his lips turn up in an expression more savage than was normal for him.

 

His mind was much occupied with the memories of a beautiful little girl with richly tinted bronze skin, black hair, and eyes like the richest of brown agates. A little girl filled with laughter. A girl who was forever chasing about a black kitten gifted to her by a beloved uncle.

 

"Some little girls grow up, Ser Amory." He found himself addressing the corpse. "Enjoy your stay in Hell, you've been sent there precisely as you deserved."

 

Then he left to do his duty, as he always did.

 

* * *

 

Ser Domeric Bolton danced Ryll aside and grinned behind his helm as the great stallion effortlessly responded to his seat and his reins. He'd fought in skirmishes with the Mountain Clans, or at least the ones that hadn't moved into better lands and ended up… mostly peaceful after the Plague. He'd been in a grand tourney and he'd _won_ it.

 

Domeric brought the blade of his sword neatly across the neck of a squat, hairy member of the infamous sellsword party. His shield went flying as blood spurted in every direction and his life bled away. Domeric didn't enjoy taking lives, but when it was necessary, he did it coldly. He was not distracted from his task for all of his high spirits, and he wasn't sloppy.

 

Though he wasn't the best blade on the field by far, he was definitely one of the best riders if not the best. It gave him an advantage he needed to make up for the fact that he was but an average swordsman. It gave him height and it often granted him a little extra time to think. Something that he'd found went well with the way he clamped down upon his heart and proceeded coldly in battle. A fight was a poor time for philosophy. Kindness could come later, when you were safe and in a position to offer it.

 

"Hold!"

 

The King's yell filled the air and Domeric looked around. No man in the mismatched armors of the Bloody Mummers or the smallfolk brigands they'd drawn into their numbers stood on the 'field'. In this case the field was the meadow around the King's tower house hunting lodge. It was an utter bloodbath. They'd fallen on them totally unawares in the wee hours of the morning, and they vastly outnumbered them.

 

"Ha!" The King let out another yell and swung down from his lathered and shaking mount.

 

Domeric felt so _bad_ for that poor horse. It was a beautiful Southron destrier. It was also a big horse, but not bulky enough that he'd have felt it was a proper mount for such a heavy man. In truth, if Domeric had to put the King on a horse, he'd have wanted the heaviest cart horse possible for the man. He could only imagine it was best to never say that aloud, however.

 

"Ned, did you see that?"

 

"Aye, Your Grace." Lord Stark was grinning as he swung down.

 

At that point Domeric got down and began to walk Ryll to calm his own stallion and make sure he came down properly from his own excited and hot state. It was only proper. Besides, it gave him an excuse to bow, say a few words, and then find a bit of solitude. He had a lot to think on, and not all of it was his giddy joy at winning the joust.

 

A thought twisted at Domeric's gut a little. No-one had told him of his half-brother's evil ways. He'd learned that his father's bastard son was dead of the Plague and mourned. He'd always wanted a brother, a companion, but he'd lost any chance of that. It made him hurt and it made him mourn to think his brother had died alone and in fear and pain of the Plague's wrath.

 

He'd found out the true tale from some of Lord Stark's other men. It had almost led to a fight, but Lord Stark had intervened and taken him aside. There, as gently as possible, he'd told Domeric the tale of Ramsay Snow's evil deeds against the smallfolk.

 

Our own people, Domeric had felt sick, what was father thinking? Because that was one place where he differed from Lord Stark. The Lord of Winterfell would punish no one without proof. That included Domeric's father, and Domeric had no doubt that his father had successfully hidden any signs that he knew of his bastard's predations.

 

Domeric _knew_ his father and his people, though, despite his long absence. Nothing happened on the Dreadfort's lands or among its bannermen without Lord Roose Bolton knowing of it. If Ramsay was doing such things it was because Roose allowed it to happen. Domeric recalled a letter from his father that had been somewhat odd, and now knew its source.

 

Roose Bolton had spent a lifetime ruling by fear. This was his first taste of what that could bring in the way of grief. None of the clans of the North would help him or consent to bring their people goats so the inoculation could happen, and as a result they were the only land hit by the Plague to any real extent. True, it was nothing near as bad as the Southrons faced, but it was a distinction. On top of that, Domeric now knew the reason why several of his father's favored bannermen had ended up under Roose's sword. They'd known that Roose knew of Ramsay's behavior and had to be eliminated. That left several holdfasts and two towers to be resettled with new Houses sworn to them.

 

Then there were the smallfolk. They weren't acting against their Lord directly, but Domeric was no fool. He'd spent his life worried that his father's practicing of First Night would get them all very dead or cheat him of his inheritance. Instead, the odd letter now stood fully explained.

 

Roose had stressed several times that he was Roose's only Heir and implied that he would be the only Heir. Roose would not remarry, Domeric knew, for his father had sworn an oath when his soulmate died that could only be cast aside if he was willing to court the Gods' disfavor. Something Roose wasn't going to do when he'd written that he genuinely seemed to believe he'd angered the Gods. A good portion of their smallfolk had left under Lord Stark's protection during the investigation and his father was in no place to attract others.

 

His tasks were obvious. His Lord Father's rule was terribly besmirched. It would fall to Domeric to reassure their people they weren't monsters. To bring in more smallfolk. To prepare for Winter. Thankfully the Gods had marked Lyarra Snow to be a Princess of Dorne for that would make preparing for Winter an easier task.

 

_Forty-thousand gold dragons._

 

Ser Domeric didn't consider himself a greedy man, but the idea had made him more than a little giddy at first. He'd won it, the funds were his. There was so much he could do with it! His first thoughts had been only partially responsible, but having spoken to his liege lord about his family's situation and finally understanding some of his father's more cryptic letters, Domeric reevaluated his priorities.

 

Some of it would go where he'd always wanted it to go: glass houses. His mother had wanted to add more to the Dreadfort, but it had never been done. He'd managed to catch Ser Deziel alone, for his House made fine glass, and speak to him for quite a while. The result was a very reasonable deal for glass sheets to be produced and then shipped North. It was going to be expensive enough to eat up a quarter of his winnings, but in the end he'd get enough glass to prepare for the long winter that was approaching.

 

Then there was the matter of the smallfolk. His father would remain as a strong leader amongst those Houses beholden to them. They'd known Roose for a long while and would respect him first and foremost, and Domeric was alright with that. Let his father concentrate on such while he concentrated on winning the smallfolk over. To do that, he was going to have to begin offering recompense to those who'd stayed. He'd also have to just start being present in a way his father never was unless for fearful reasons.

 

I need a wife, Domeric admitted to himself. A Lady was always considered a softer, gentler person. Plus, he could bring in a girl from a family with a very good reputation. The kind that the people would be naturally disposed to think signaled better things. He must choose well, a woman whose demeanor was kind and happy. She had to be the sort of person that the smallfolk would naturally trust. Plus, frankly, his line was just in danger simply because he was the last of it.

 

Lord Karstark had a daughter around his age, Domeric knew, mayhaps a bit younger. She'd be his best bet for the Karstarks were well-loved by their people. After that, House Glover was considered very fair. That was if either would marry a daughter to Roose Bolton's son.

 

In truth, his best option would be if Lord Eddard would part with his next eldest daughter. Ser Domeric knew a lost cause when he saw one, however. Lord Stark liked him, he knew that well enough, and was grateful that he would invite Domeric and even his father to his home. Liking him and wishing to bring the Boltons closer to him to avoid further such monstrosities as Ramsay Snow was something different than offering you a daughter. Perhaps it was just as well. She was only two-and-ten from what the Princess and Lady Arya said. That would mean at least two years, or three, until Domeric really felt it was safe to wed her and see her carry a child. He'd have to be madly in love to risk his family by waiting that long, wouldn't he?

 

* * *

 

Lady Olenna Tyrell didn't often get involved in situations she found odd at her age. She'd seen too damned much in the time she'd been alive. This, she would allow, wasn't normal even by her standards. If nothing else, however, it did put Mace in the one situation where he really did shine.

 

"My dear Princess, what you've been through!"

 

Instant fatherly sympathy erupted from Mace Tyrell the second he led his mother and youngest son into the room. They'd been preparing to leave a day earlier than they'd planned when one of the Dornish party had burst into their quarters all but demanding the use of their maester. Not that she blamed the Viper for distrusting Pycelle. The man was Tywin's creature, bought and paid for in Lannister gold.

 

"Loras, go get some of your grandmother's tea. You know the kind. The one for thunderstorms." Mace announced, then paused. "If that's alright, Mother?"

 

"It's fine, Mace, well-done." Olenna offered her son some rare praise and received a startled smile before he sat down again and pulled the chair up to the settee where the Princess Lyarra sat beside Lady Walda, both their dresses splattered in dried blood.

 

"You'll quite like it. My mother always made it for us and for her _many_ grandchildren whenever there were bad storms. It's just the thing for calming nerves." Mace proclaimed and patted the Princess' hand.

 

"I've already sent for food from a shop in the city." Lady Walda added.

 

Olenna nodded in approval. The smallfolk would not poison a Martell at the moment. Far safer than trusting the castle for anything right now.

 

"Now, I don't want you to worry a bit any longer." Mace added and reached out and patted the Lady Walda's hands too. "Even if he's a disgusting letch and a bas- an, um, unpleasant fellow at times, the Prince Oberyn knows what he's about when someone's injured. The Lady Gwyn will be fine. Why, though it was his fault it happened, the Viper is likely why my son Willas is alive at all. When the horse rose from crushing my son he was who wrapped his sword belt around Willas' thigh to keep him from bleeding too much. The very maester who is in there with your friend now is who told me that doing so kept him from bleeding out due to the bones sticking out of his knee."

 

Olenna's jaw nearly dropped. She'd been at the tourney when it had happened. How could she not be? It was her favorite grandson's first tourney and he was so young. She'd been nervous, but not overly much. Willas wasn't the best jouster, but he also wasn't that motivated to make a fool of himself. He'd ride the tilt a few times, then he'd bow at whoever bested him and life would go on.

 

Olenna also was not a tall woman. The last thing she'd seen before the crowd had risen up and her view was of nothing but shoulders was Willas' horse stumbling as he hung there by his stirrup after being struck from the saddle. Then she'd began to shove everyone aside, but by the time they'd parted there was nothing to see except her son kneeling by hisson as Willas screamed upon the pitch with his leg all but on backwards and his knee a bloody mess of raw, rent flesh and bone…

 

"Mace." Olenna spoke very calmly. "Are you saying that it was _Prince_ _Oberyn_ that put that tourniquet on your son?"

 

"Yes," Mace was occupied providing the girl's a steady stream of platitudes and fatherly comfort. It actually seemed to be working, as both girls no longer had a white-knuckle grip on each others' hands and were looking appreciatively at her son as he blathered on kindly. "But he'd have hardly needed it had the Viper not knocked him from his horse."

 

Olenna counted to ten in her head. Then she extended it to twenty. Right now she was sitting in the epicenter of the most dramatic thing to happen in decades. A woman married into House Martell and the daughter of House Stark had nearly been assassinated in the Red Keep and while a guest of the King. These sort of things destabilized regimes.

 

She would not strangle her son for anything. She would let him know what she thought of waiting all of these years to give her this one crucial piece of information. This was a task that would, of course, extend to anyone else who knew. For now, however, she would let Mace forget he'd ever said it and make him regret not telling her at the time of the joust later.

 

"There you have it then." Olenna sat down as well and rested both her hands on her cane, catching and holding the wide, dark gray eyes of the dark haired girl. "Princess, your husband is no fool when it comes to a maester's art. Your friend shall recover."

 

"She lost so much blood." Lady Walda offered, her lemon colored hair disarranged and her plain gown stained.

 

Olenna would have loved to know why the girl was dressed so poorly. Her money was on a trip to gossip in the kitchens. Her own people had informed her that the Princess' ladies-in-waiting were everywhere amongst the servants of the Red Keep. She found she quite approved and almost wished the Gods had brought Willas a Stark bride. As it was, she thought the Princess might be more of a handful than she wanted to deal with training in her own age.

 

Then there was the white direwolf currently sleeping at the girl's feet. Olenna was betting its white fur got on everything. She'd never liked shedding pets.

 

"Willas lost a great deal too, and my son's as hale as anyone." Mace maintained. "And think of the war injuries people survive!"

 

"This was no picnic, Lady Walda, but here I am." Ser Arron Qorgyle offered from where he stood on guard and tapped at his empty eye socket and the scars that surrounded it. "There are others in our party who can tell you of old battle wounds as well, and I know you've seen all of the Princes' scars, Princess."

 

The girl blushed and Olenna admitted it was a bit cute that she wasn't faking it. Teaching Margaery how to blush at will had been a long series of lessons. It was a difficult talent to master.

 

The door to the dressing room that had been claimed as an infirmary opened. All eyes turned towards the door. Prince Oberyn Martell stood within, his expression harder than flint and his clothing flecked with blood despite spotlessly clean hands.

 

"The Lady Gwyn will be fine, if we can keep infection at bay. She has lost a great deal of blood and will need to rest, however." The Viper announced. "The Maester shall stay with her, but you may go in Walda. Lyarra, go in, but quickly, yes?"

 

The Princess rose with her friend, curtseying to Olenna and Mace absently before scurrying through the door to her friend. Lyarra Martell did pause to press a kiss to her husband's cheek, which he bent down to receive. Quickly he shut the door behind them and stepped forward and bowed.

 

"Lord Tyrell, Lady Olenna, thank you for the use of your maester. His services were essential."

"It was for a lady's sake." Mace replied stiffly, then just looked perplexed. "What the hell is going on here, anyway?"

 

"I do not know, Lord Tyrell, but you can be _most_ _assured_ I will find out."

 

"Oh, I'm sure." Olenna drawled and slid her arm through her son's. "Come, Mace, we should leave them in peace."

 

"I- well, yes, Mother, I suppose we should." Mace's genuine decency crept through his hubris and foolishness. "The ladies will be alright, yes? It's not a thing a lady should have to do, to pick up a weapon and defend themselves."

 

"No, but they certainly fared better than the last Princess who couldn't." Olenna couldn't help drawling and then nodding her head at the stiff-faced Viper. "I think we must all keep that in mind, when mocking some Dornish ladies and their training at arms."

 

"I… yes." Mace muttered. "If it's all going to the Seven Hells I might as well have Garlan get Margie a sword. You were right about bringing her to this place, Mother. Can't even trust a lady to be safe under the King's own protection…"

 

Olenna met the Red Viper's black eyes and accepted his stiff nod in return as they left. She'd have to write a letter to Willas. First, of course, there was Loras' soulmate to consider. Renly was recovering, but if the Queen was behind this - and who else would it be - then the Lioness must be less stable than even she had thought. That meant anyone she thought stood between her and her lunatic progeny's throne might be in danger.

 

It was a good thing that Shireen was already safely afloat on the Onion Knight's ship, on her way back to Storm's End. Their own party would leave directly, Olenna decided, to get Loras and his soulmate out of the capitol. The maester could follow later. Willas she would write now and instruct to send a letter off to Sunspear to await the Red Viper's arrival. There was no way, after all, that the man would wait more than however long it took to organize his departure to leave now.

 

 _No_. House Tyrell would gain nothing from staying at this point. It was time to leave and consider new strategies. The last Tyrell to try their luck at Dornish politics had fared badly. She would make sure that Willas fared better.

 

* * *

 

Grey Wind snarled as he hamstrung the figure raising his sword against Robb's back. He turned and put his own blade through the man's gut in a gap where his overlarge ringmail was bound together with leather thongs because it had been cut through at the same location sometime in the past when some other man wore it. The figure cried out and fell and Robb swung around again.

 

They were separated from the larger part of the fight by a rocky ridge and a great briar patch that had grown up a set of trees until the brambles stretched ten feet high between trunks and branches. Robb had followed Grey Wind through a break in the thicket. Most of the men they were fighting had already died trying to flee back to the beach. Now all that was left of them was this group that had fled instead to the shelter of their camp.

 

" _Fuck_!" Theon's dismayed battlecry of the day rang out along with the clang of swords.

 

Robb turned, his heart tensed. Already he'd been saved twice by arrows sliding past his shoulder or under his arm to kill an opponent attacking his back when Grey Wind was otherwise occupied. Now, however, the ground was too close for such a weapon and Theon had drawn his blade and joined the bloody scrum.

 

To his left he could hear the steady, meaty thwack of Keavan Forrester's morning star as it made another hit and some fool tried and failed to hack through his heavy ironwood shield. It was to no avail and soon a horrible sound, like a wet, green branch cracking filled the small clearing along with a cry of agony. Keavan had made another good hit.

 

Off to the side the Smalljon Umber was, in general, making a _mess_. It was just the kind of mess one wanted to see in a fight. Battle rage had taken the usually gentle soul into its passionate grip and he'd fallen into her embrace gladly. Now, bellowing at the top of his lungs and weilding a sword almost as large as the Greatjon's, Smalljon Umber was generally most easily detectable because of either the severed limbs flying away from his position or the men wildly fleeing from his rage. It was a rather profound change from the young man who was never happier than when he had Rickon up on his shoulders, who moped rather continuously about Lyarra's marriage, and who had cried over the bodies of the children the raiders had slain.

 

 _“There was an old man who used to come to Lannisport and hang out in the taverns. He was a friend of Maggie the Frog.’_ Gwyn's words inched out of his memory. _"He used to say, 'There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.''_

 

Gwyn had first used that quote to describe Robb's own father. He had been rather confused, for his father was gentle with his children, but he could certainly be severe with others easily enough. For the first time he really felt he understood that quote. Of all the people he'd probably have been least afraid of in battle, Smalljon Umber would have been the first. He was strong, yes, but he was fair and kind.

 

You could not predict the sea in storm, however, as Theon liked to boast so much of her beauty and her treachery. Nor could you predict what would happen in the dark where a man's eyes were of no use. Now, looking at kind, understanding Smalljon Umber as he roared and cast his sword aside to grab the ankle of a wounded man desperately trying to climb a tree, Robb finally really and truly understood. Watching the Smalljon yank the man down and pummel that final living raider with his bare hands would be something he never forgot.

 

Everyone has their limits and lines drawn on their soul, Robb decided, And if you cross them, Gods help you. If you cross those limits in a _kind_ man? Then, well, _fuck_ , you wouldn't see it coming, now would you?"

 

"Smalljon, Jon, my friend, he's dead." Torrhen Karstark spoke kindly from where he was carefully approaching the berserker.

 

"Where're the rest of them?"

 

"I'm pretty sure the rest are dead too."

 

The black-haired young man took a deep shaking breath and mopped his face with his hand. It left great streaks of blood. The Smalljon didn't seem to notice and Robb didn't feel like telling him. If he looked like some terrifying Wildling Raider when they rode back into Deepwood Motte, well, it would only lead to a letter getting back to Greatjon to make him properly proud.

 

"Oh…"

 

"Robb?"

 

"Theon." Robb turned, his mind coming back to him from the fog of battle. He found his friend checking the dead over. "Theon, are you injured?"

 

"Not for the moment." His friend laughed a little hysterically.

 

" _Theon_?"

 

He watched as his friend's legs all but went out from underneath him. They'd yet to see the beaches or the ship the men had arrived in, but they were in patched and mismatched armor for the most part. A few were in better shape with better gear, but none of it fit them.

 

"They're _Ironborn_ , Robb."

 

Robb opened his mouth to point out that was an obvious fact. Even in patched and mismatched armor the men were obviously of the Iron Islands. A few even wore the Kraken of House Greyjoy.

 

"Theon, just because these men are Ironborn doesn't mean that it's a real rebellion."

 

"Oh, it's _definitely_ a large scale rebellion. Why else would my father not write in two years?" Theon ran both his hands over his face and looked up with haunted, frightened eyes. "The only two options are that he's dead of the Plague or that he was cutting ties before he sentenced me to lose my head for his actions."

 

"The Iron Islands got to inoculation goats from either Lord Hoster or Lord Tywin." Torrhen Karstark offered slowly. "We know the Plague hit them, though, because Ravens came out asking for assistance, but the North had not the ships to send any. If your father's dead the King won't ask you die for some other lord's treason. It would be dishonorable."

 

It went unsaid that the Forresters and other Houses on the coast wouldn't have helped anyway. Keavan merely stood silent, his expression set in a fierce scowl as he looked between Theon and the dead men scattered around the beach. The Smalljon came back to himself and to stand near them, sitting down on a stump out of weariness as the battle fury left him.

 

"Was it honorable to make your father swear to protect a rapist and child murderer?" Theon asked, looking up. "You've had letters from Lyarra. Is it honorable that the King's lusting after his best friend's daughter?"

 

"What?" Smalljon Umber looked seriously affronted. "She's Marked!"

 

 _If the King isn't careful, he's going to actually have to pick on someone his own size,_ Robb thought briefly in the midst of his shock. Then he realized what his mind was doing and shook himself. He was the one in charge. His father wasn't there, he needed to act.

 

"Theon, you're not going to be beheaded over this!"

 

"Robb, wake up!" Theon's hands were shaking, and he waved them. "Look around you!"

 

"Aye, I am!" Robb said fiercely and walked forward to rest his hands on the shoulders of his best friend. "I see a man who saved my life three times in this battle alone. Who followed me and three other men out of sight of the others and into an area that's all but built for an ambush."

 

"We should _really_ talk about you running into an ambush, my Lord." Torrhen Karstark muttered and Robb ignored him.

 

"It won't matter. Robb your father swore to the King!"

 

Robb had nothing to say to that and a sick feeling started to sink into his gut. His father had sworn. His father always kept his word. Ned Stark was famous for it across all of Westeros. Even the Iron Bank in Braavos had called him a, _'Preferred Customer'_ , because the only loan he'd ever taken out was a small one, right after the Rebellion, and he paid it off precisely on time.

 

"Mayhaps it's a rebellion against your father-." Smalljon started and Theon stood, cutting him off with a gesture and stumbling backwards until his back rested against a tree.

 

"It won't _matter_ , Smalljon. Robb, honor requires that you tell your father of this. He will tell the King as soon as the Raven lands. Then the King will lose his fucking temper and a Raven will land at Winterfell telling you to take my head."

 

With feathers hanging from his mouth Grey Wind came over and leaned against Robb's side, but it was of no comfort. Theon was right. He couldn't do it, he _wouldn't…_

 

"You can't disobey the King…" Theon's strangled words held a hint of manic laughter as his breathing began to speed up.

 

"Here!" Keavan Forrester called out and suddenly seized a body by the shoulders and began dragging it over to them. "The hair's the right color. It's too long, but we can cut it. He's the right size and that's the most important part. Theon, take off your clothes."

 

"What?" Theon blinked and Robb spoke at the same time, their words overlapping.

 

"Take off your bloody clothes and give us your weapons!" Keavan Forrester spat. "Oh, by the tiny tits of the Children of the Forest, I'm trying to _save_ _your_ _life_ Greyjoy! Despite all the damned times your family has stolen, murdered, or raped mine, I call you my friend. Now stop being an _idiot_ and strip you idiot."

 

Robb stared down at the body for a split second, and then he understood. Theon was still gaping at Keavan, as were Torrhen and the Smalljon, but Robb got it. It was a thin hope, but Robb felt his heart leap.

 

"He's right." Robb stepped forward and hauled Theon fully onto his feet from where he'd leaned against the tree. "Quickly, someone will arrive shortly from the rest of our forces. Torrhen, go keep anyone from coming in. Tell them that Lord Theon has fallen and we - we're observing Ironborn death rites for him!"

 

Torrhen nodded and sprinted off without a moment's hesitation.

 

"You-you…" Theon caught on, paling but looking up in a kind of fragile hope. "Robb, you mean to swap the body for me?"

 

"They'll never know it's not you. Keavan's caved his face in with his morningstar."

 

Keavan was too busy stripping the body out of its own armor and clothing to answer. Theon seemed to be struggling with the mere idea of it. Finally he swallowed and spoke.

 

"You'd do that? You'd lie to the King and your father for me? Robb, that's _treason_!"

 

"I'd commit treason for any of my brothers." Robb replied, his throat thick but his tone honest. "My sisters too, for that matter."

 

"Where will he go?" Smalljon asked as he took Theon's bow and quiver and helped steady him as Theon began to tug at the closings of his boiled leather and shrug out of the mail under it.

 

"To Lyarra." Robb's tone was wry. "She'll take you into her household and Prince Oberyn and his brother would both delight in thwarting the King. They'll keep your secret."

 

"And ours." Keaven added.

 

"You'll all be committing treason."

 

Robb nodded slowly and looked at his friends. Torrhen Karstark even turned from his post, watching for and waiting to prevent interference. The sheer magnitude of what he was asking hit him.

 

"I can ask none of you to go against your conscience or your King on my orders. It must be of your free will."

 

"I wouldn't have suggested it if I wasn't willing to do it." Keavan snorted in his quiet way.

 

"I've never liked punishing a man's son for his father's sins." Torrhen Karstark shrugged and smirked. "Besides, I'd hate to lose the only decent Ironborn I'd ever met."

 

"I'm no Ironborn." Theon rasped. "I-I don't know _what_ I am anymore, but if I was Ironborn I wouldn't have cared about the reaving. I wouldn't have raised my sword or knocked my bow against my own people."

 

"You're a Stark by any other name, just as Lyarra was when mother called her Snow." Robb said with his voice full of feeling. Then he turned to the one member of the party who hadn't spoken yet. "Smalljon?"

 

The big young man looked up as if deep in thought. Then he smiled. It was all teeth and, for a moment, he believed that the Umbers had giant blood for there was a glint of pride that wasn't quite human in the big man's eyes.

 

"The only Kings the North has ever owned were Starks." Smalljon shrugged at the idea of treason. "Everything else is just lip service."

 

"Right." Robb wasn't ready to process that answer at all, but he let it rest and planned instead. Planning he could do; he'd ambushed and run the damned Ironborn to ground in a thicket, hadn't he? His first battle, too. "Theon, once you're changed we'll hide you in the deepest part of the brambles here. We can cover you in my cloak, leaves, and evergreen boughs. That'll keep you warm enough while you wait. It might be overnight or longer, but I'll send Grey Wind to get you when I've made arrangements."

 

"We're not too far from my home." Keavan suggested. "I'll write my father and sister from Deepwood Motte. Everyone will expect me to let them know I live. Father doesn't need to know about _this_ , but Aislinn will help."

 

"See if the Lady Aislinn can arrange food and clothing. It has to be simple; nothing to draw attention but fine enough to explain how he travels alone."

 

"Sellsword." Torrhen grunted from where he'd drifted closer to them before waving and sprinting back to his post, fully vanishing from sight.

 

"I'll get together some weapons to back that up." Smalljon nodded, then paused and looked around at the bodies. "If he's going overland there's the toll at the Twins…"

 

"Raid the bodies for coins." Theon suggested practically and Robb winced, but nodded.

 

"Aye, do that." Robb ran a hand over his face. "He'll need a horse. It can't come from Winterfell's stables."

 

"If we find enough for it, Aislinn can 'sell' one to someone." Keavan winced. "Father won't be pleased that she took initiative where the stables are concerned, but she'll do it."

 

"There's enough for it." Smalljon reported grimly as he held up several fat purses and then began to search the tents. "There's enough to likely get you down to Dorne without having to work for your meals, even."

 

"Do you even know how long it takes to get to Dorne?" Keavan asked, growing peevish as he finished stripping the body and offered the bloody clothing to Theon, who put it on with a pallid expression and a grimace.

 

"Two moons?"

 

"That's King's Landing. Think something closer to four."

 

"Okay, he'll have to work a little."

 

A few moments later and Grey Wind sniffed out a deep depression underneath an arch where the bramble vines were pushed up and away from where some large beast had slept. Theon hoped aloud that it didn't plan on coming back. Robb reclaimed his cloak when the Smalljon found a bearskin in one of the tents. That was spread over Theon to keep him warm, with a cow hide beneath him taken from another tent. Then leaves and boughs were spread over to hide him.

 

Three hours later and the bodies of the Ironborn had all been stripped of their gear. They'd made it down to the beach and taken possession of the Ironborn's ship only to find it surprisingly poorly cared for. Robb stood beside Lord Glover, who expressed his sadness at seeing Lord Theon dead.

 

"I know he was your friend, but mayhaps it's better this way." The older man shook his head. "He was bound to suffer for his father's treachery, and now you won't be forced to wield the blade that does it."

 

Robb kept his face clear of anything but grief and anger. It was easy, as he felt both. He found that it also helped to think of his father. There was an irony there that was almost painful. There was no man on Westeros more honest nor more honorable than Lord Eddard Stark, and for all his life Robb had tried to be the man his father always was. He'd tried to be a son worthy of his father.

 

In trying to be a brother worthy of a friend who'd come to him, who'd become part of his family, and whose life now relied on a lie, Robb felt he was betraying his father. He could do nothing else for Theon, though. So, knowing from a thousand instances where his face gave some small mischief away or Gwyn lamented Stark honor even as she praised it, Robb didn't try and play any part at all.

 

Instead he thought of his father's secret. For his whole life he'd refused to give away the name of Lyarra's mother. It didn't matter who importuned them or what their right. He'd always kept his silence and remained stoic in the face of it. So that was what Robb did now.

 

"There are other matters to speak of."

 

Robb changed to subject. If asked directly, he simply said he wouldn't speak of it. Let them assume his grief kept him silent. Their assumptions would guard Theon and all of them just as his father stood guard over his own, largely pointless, secret affair.

 

"True enough, Lord Robb." Lord Glover agreed. "What now?"

 

"We meet with the Wull and the Ash." He said firmly, glad to shift onto a sensibility his father trusted him with and he was doing well and honorably. "We need to set up patrols on the coast. There are old watchtowers that are largely intact. They need only cleaning, to be supplied, and men to man them."

 

"Aye, that can be arranged swiftly enough."

 

"Everyone needs to write to their maesters." Robb added, breathing out. "It'll be hard to manage given their training, but we need to have means of fast communication from the watchtowers. That means ravens. Riders on swift mounts will work where necessary, but ravens are best."

 

Lord Glover agreed and Robb walked off with Grey Wind at his side. He tried not to think about Theon lying in a beast's bed and waiting under a dome of thorns for some sign he could emerge only to flee to an uncertain fate. It was better than the certain fate that King Robert would no doubt call for in his temper. With that in mind, Robb penned a letter to his father in King's Landing to inform him of the Ironborn being in revolt and of Theon Greyjoy's 'death'.

  



	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oberyn refrains from violence because he's too busy cuddling his wife (plus his preferred targets aren't available), Ned Stark is DONE with the Red Keep, everyone feels sorry for King Robert's horse, Arya gets a mission, and Varys is ever the spider.

**Chapter Thirty - 297 A.C.**

 

Lady Aislinn Forrester crept out of her home before dawn with the excuse of setting some traps. She took no guards with her. Her father would be cross about that later. Then again, he’d also be cross about her selling a horse from their stable without direct permission. Her father wasn’t a fool, but she was fairly sure she could convince him that running the household from such a young age had made her overconfident of her authority within the household.

Aislinn winced at the thought of how her father would take  _ that _ . Her father was a kind man, but his own horrendous marriage had left him with strong feelings about a woman’s necessary subordination to her lord. She just hoped Keavan’s promise to make sure that he would keep her father from rushing her into a betrothal with someone she didn’t want would be one that Keavan could keep. She didn’t know what Keavan actually had planned, but he swore he could handle it and she would have to trust her brother.

The sight of the great gray beast standing at the edge of a small clearing in the woods made Aislinn smile and briefly forget her fears. Then it made her sigh and push her daydreams away. Lord Robb was handsome. That much was true, and Aislinn had to admit that she found his auburn curls  _ exotic _ , and his blue eyes very fine. That said, he was the Lord of Winterfell and her family were mid-level bannermen. The likelihood of a marriage there was slim when wealthy heiresses like Lord Manderly’s get were out there. 

It was the direwolf that had charmed her, though, Aislinn had to admit as she sighed and held out her hand slowly for the direwolf. 

“Hello Greywind. Fine morning for a hunt, yes?” Aislinn asked quietly and felt her delight break over her face as the direwolf didn’t just snuffle her fingers but leaned forward and bumped its great head underneath her hand to ask for a scratch around the ears.

Utterly captivated that the mythic,  _ magical _ creature before her was allowing her to stroke its thick, rough fur, Aislinn didn’t notice the lean figure that rose from where it had been crouched out of the freezing drizzle beneath the lower branches of a large evergreen tree. She’d moved on to scratching beneath Greywind’s chin. As a result, when a hand rested on her shoulder she jumped and squeaked, lashing out with her elbow out of instinct.

“Ooph!” 

Aislinn turned to find Theon Greyjoy clutching his gut and wheezing because the breath had been knocked out of him. 

“Ooh, I’m sorry!” Aislinn laughed quietly. “I - you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Grey Wi-,” He wheezed. “Maul me if I -ied anything…. Woman, you’ve got  _ arms _ .”

“I’m an archer.” 

“True.” He managed a pained grin, his blue-green eyes sharp and sad and confused all at once.

It was an expression Aislinn had seen on his face ever since he’d shown up a few days before. She’d hidden him in a small cave at that point, one settled into a tumbled down, rocky hill. It wasn’t a great sort of accommodation for a man who should have been a great Lord, but considering her family history it was a lot more generous than disembowelment and a shallow grave for any Ironborn caught on their lands, wasn’t it? The man had proven himself, however, Ironborn or not. He’d saved Lord Robb’s life and called him brother.  _ Her _ brother called him friend, moreover, and any friend of Keavan’s had her loyalty.

She’d told Theon as much when she’d gotten him settled into the cave. He’d had a four day walk, only in the dead of night, from where the battle with the Ironborn had taken place to her home. Keavan had sent her a raven, carefully encoded, to tell her where to look for Lord Robb’s Secret. She’d found Theon at precisely the spot Keavan had said, dirty and tired, and the day before Grey Wind had been at the cave as well, curled up beside Theon in the dark as she brought the horse that was now tied carefully in a thicket a little distance away. Unlike the horses of Winterfell,  _ their _ horses spooked around the direwolf.

“I brought you some of Keavan’s clothes, some food that’ll keep for your journey, and a gift.” Aislinn said as the other man straightened up and she handed him the solid, unembellished leather travelling pack she’d put everything into.

“A gift, for  _ me _ ? Why my lady, I hadn’t known your heart was so engaged.”

“You just can’t help that smirk, can you?”

“I would hate to deprive the ladies of my gods-gifted good looks and charm.”

Greywind listened to this smirking exchange and butted his head between them, standing there and looking up at Theon with his golden eyes narrowed. Theon grinned down at the wolf before his face fell. Aislinn knew the feeling.

“My mother left to become a Septa.” Aislinn blurted out, then pulled a face when the Ironborn man gave her a strange look. “What I mean is, I know what it’s like when - when someone you love or things you thought you understood all go wrong. Mother didn’t leave us on good terms. She called us the children of a godless marriage. Later she wrote urging me to come and serve the Seven or roast in however many Hells they have. Charming, aye?”

“Oh,  _ very _ charming.” He huffed out a breath and then looked at her with a face that gentled from his look of lost grief. “What did you do?”

“Lived without her.” Aislinn advised. “It’s not easy being a girl without a mother, or an aunt, or anything else. You’ve got to figure out who you are on your own.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Lady Aislinn Forrester.” She answered with the easy pride. “I’m Keavan Forrester’s only sister, my father’s daughter and the lady of his home. I am the best archer on the Western Shores of the North.”

“As long as I’m in Winterfell, at least.” Theon Greyjoy shot back and she reached out and smacked his arm. 

“I  _ won _ if you’ll recall.”

“You  _ cheated _ ! That bow-.”

“Speaking of.” She interrupted and reached into her pocket and pulled out a sturdy braided leather thong from which dangled a pendant. “I don’t have another Weirwood bow to gift you, and if I did I’d probably save it for whatever sons the Gods of the Forest gift me, but this will bring you good luck, and guide you.”

Theon Greyjoy looked surprised but plucked the object from her hand to examine it. It was nothing special to an Ironborn’s eye, she was sure, or a Lord raised in Winterfell. It was just a necklace made of a braided leather thong. Hanging from it on silver wire was a stone arrowhead and on either side of it were two bone white weirwood beads with rusty red runes carved into them.

“Is it magic?” He asked after a minute, looking up. “I mean, not that I believe in tales like Old Nan told, but do  _ you _ believe it is?”

“A  _ direwolf _ who runs into battle beside the future Lord of Winterfell stands here and lets me pet it and you don’t believe in magic?”

She was pleased when Greywind leaned a little against her hip when she said that. Theon just looked nonplussed, and then his smirk came back a little. He shook his head.

“You Northerners are more superstitious than sailors. Why dragonglass?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, and then pulled a thin, fine, silver chain from out of the neck of her gown to show the dragonglass arrowhead she already wore. “It’s just something we do here. The Mountain clans do it as well. Keavan has a dragonglass knife, so does father. It’s a very old tradition.” 

“Really?”

“Aye.” Aislinn felt herself become enthusiastic as she explained. “When a girl has her first moon’s blood in the mountain clans, or here, she’s gifted an arrowhead. If the family has the funds it’s supposed to be dragonglass, because that’s luckiest. You’re supposed to throw it up in the air under the Heart Tree, and whatever direction it points in when it lands is the direction your future husband will live in.”

“So I’m supposed to throw it up in the air and pray for a good husband?”

“Don’t laugh!” Aislinn shoved him, but she grinned to. “Though if you’re heading to Dorne, I imagine you could find something  _ like _ a husband if you wanted. Keavan told me that Lord Robb was complaining that-.”

“All the Dornish thought I was Robb’s lover,  _ yes _ , okay,  _ fine _ !” The man grinned sheepishly at her, before it became lecherous. “The Dornish ladies were very  _ interested _ in the details, if you took my meaning. I always maintained he was too shy to join in, but loved hearing of it-.”

Theon stepped back carefully when Grey Wind rumbled at him and Aislinn clamped a hand over her mouth less her laughter carry through the forest.

“This won’t do. You’ve have to  _ leave _ . I have to  _ get back _ , and instead you’re spreading false tales of lechery with my Lord’s heir!” Aislinn bit her lip as the levity vanished from the air. “Thank you, for being a good friend to my brother and for saving Lord Robb.”

“Any day.” The serious, hurt look was back. “I - I’m sorry for what my people did to yours. They - it’s wrong. What we do - the reaving. It’s  _ wrong… _ Though I suppose if I can say that, I’m no Ironborn. No Greyjoy, or at least my father would say so.”

“And my own mother considers me a soulless, godless, savage.” She shrugged. “The arrowhead’s good luck. It’ll guide you, and the beads come from our own Heart Tree. If the Drowned God’s abandoned you, the Old Gods will watch you wherever it goes.”

“What do the runes mean?”

“No-one knows anymore, but they’re powerful protection.”

“ _ If _ you believe in magic.”

“I don’t think  _ you _ need to believe in magic.” Aislinn raised her eyebrows and gestured to the direwolf now pacing the edges of the clearing. “Magic clearly believes in  _ you _ .”

He shook his head. Aislinn had already brought him herbs to die his hair a dark muddy brown, and they’d worked well, added with the grizzled beard he’d grown in, and his modest clothing and worn leather armor and he didn’t look much like the young squid lord who’d flirted with her that first visit at all. That was the point, though, wasn’t it?

_ At least he’s mounted well,  _ Aislinn thought when she considered all the dangerous of this mad gamble and his journey south. The horse she’d chosen for him was a good animal. A solid sort of beast of no specific type or name, with good legs, a deep chest, and powerful haunches under a plain, mud-brown coat. It would get him anywhere he needed to go, but not attract much attention while he did it. 

“Thank you again.” He said seriously as he climbed into the saddle.

“You’re welcome.” She replied and formally offered him a curtsey as she watched him slide the thong around his neck, tuck it beneath his tunic, and see that his sword, knife, and bow were all settled as they should be for the ride. 

Grey Wind didn’t lope off with him as she half expected. Instead the direwolf stood with her as Theon turned, riding down through a deer path that would take him to a woodsman’s trail. That, in turn, would take him to a secondary road that would lead him south by one way or another to the Neck. Until he got to Lord Reed’s lands, she knew, he was to stay off the King’s Road. It would be safer for everyone that way. 

“I suppose you’d best get back to Lord Robb.” Aislinn found herself talking to the direwolf and was delighted when its pink tongue darted out to lap at her fingers before, like the Northwind itself, it raced away in the pitch black darkness that existed on a rainy day before dawn.

With nothing else to do, she walked carefully back home. While Lord Forrester was dressing down his daughter, who threw her hands up and yelled at him in a way she never had before and with a disrespect he couldn’t have imagined a day before, Lord Robb Stark was awakening from a dream he really  _ couldn’t _ deny was something more than the images of sleep. Grey Wind, he knew, was safe and well and returning home. Theon had begun his long, dangerous, journey down to the Princess Lyarra in Dorne. 

“Apparently I’m a warg.” Robb Stark muttered to himself, barely audible and half-hysterically under his breath as he pressed his hands into his face as he sat in his guest room in Deepwood Motte and thought about the letter he’d sent off the night before to his father.

He didn’t forget Aislinn’s kindness towards Theon, however. Robb also thought of the way that she had smelled of evergreen and woman through Grey Wind’s senses. The feel of her hand carding through his/their fur had been nice, too. She hadn’t been scared. She’d called his wolf  _ magic _ , like it wasn’t something to fear but something full of wonder.

His head too full of too many things, Robb Stark rose and went to wash off in the basin. He had a lot to do today. There was Moat Cailin to consider, for her father would certainly want  _ more _ attention paid to it if the Ironborn were going to step up raiding. Then there was the western coastline itself. Until his father returned he was Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, and he had duties to mind.  _ That _ was what he would think of until whatever time Theon was safe in Dorne and Lyarra could send him some word. He was far too busy to think of  _ any _ pretty girl at the moment.

Two days later Lady Catelyn Stark got a letter from Lord Forrester, however, asking her if she’d take Lady Aislinn Forrester into her household. The Lord feared that, without a mother in hand, she was growing a little unruly and wild. Lady Stark’s dedication to her duty was famous, and he would like if she’d impart some of that to his daughter. 

Wound up in the roots of a weirwood tree, Brynden Rivers listened to Aislinn Forrester’s prayers beneath the Heart Tree and grinned to himself. Daeron’s descendant, the  _ rightful _ Queen to the Iron Throne had some decent support right now. The Gods had seen her bound to a strong warrior and House Martell’s second son. The Dornish were strong, but they lacked manpower. Likewise, the North was strong, but House Stark a little precarious as it had only the one branch and Lord Stark’s children were all children themselves. 

_ Politically speaking, it’s time for a nice fertile Northern marriage _ , Brynden noted,  _ and who better than a good, loyal, friend’s sister? One from a house just connected enough to be worthy but not so powerful as to irk the other more powerful houses. _ Pleased at the thought Brynden stretched out his mind to Bran Stark. Time to confuse the boy a little further. If he got him curious enough and turned around enough, he’d go to the moon and back for answers. Compared to that a trip past the Wall wasn’t so difficult, was it?

 

* * *

 

Tywin Lannister was jarred out of sleep by the rapid scratching of an alarmed servant on his chamber door.

“Enter!” He barked, sitting up. His servants were too well-trained to wake him for anything but an emergency, so he was expecting one as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and wiped the sand from his eyes. He wasn’t displeased by the succinct description the servant offered, though he was far from pleased with the  _ content _ of it.

“Lord Tywin, there was an attempt on Princess Lyarra’s life.”

Tywin didn’t release a torrent of obscene words or a display of unseemly temper. His eyes likely broadcast it, however, given the look of alarm on the servant’s face. _Good_ , Tywin thought savagely, _someone_ _should have the good sense to fear the repercussions of this._

“Who was involved?”

“Ser Amory Lorch as well as seven other men that I know of so far.”

“All of the Westerlands?”

“Five were of the Westerlands, not counting Lorch, my Lord. The other two were Essosi. One was the man from the tourney who attempted to pull an unblunted knife on the King. The other was the man who slashed the Stormlord across the back.”

“I want the names of the five men of the West.  _ Immediately _ .”

The man obligingly reeled them off while helping Tywin dress. He asked after his normal body servant and found that, as he had been yesterday, today he was still indisposed due to his recent attack of kidney stones. It was just another small annoyance on top of many others.

The names were not of any great importance. Tywin only recognized two of them as the third or fourth sons of minor knights. Amory Lorch ran with a crowd. Some of that group was composed of the Mountain’s Men, but a great deal of it was just the dregs of the gentry or lower nobility of Tywin’s demesne. 

“Has the King returned?” 

“No, Lord Tywin, he has not. He sent a rider ahead, however. The King, Lord Stark, and your son should arrive tomorrow.”

“Good.” Tywin grunted, relieved that he wouldn’t have the oaf who sat on the Iron Throne to contend with as well or Ned Stark. Having Jaime around to take his sister in hand somewhat might have been a benefit, but his son had done so little to assist in that task lately perhaps it was best he was elsewhere as well. “Lord Commander Selmy has taken control of the matter, I assume?”

“Yes, Lord Tywin. I can take you to him directly. He’s awaiting the Master of Laws.”

“I’m sure he is.” 

He found the Lord Commander in a side hall with Grand Maester Pycelle and two younger Maesters, neither of which Tywin recognized. Both looked nervously between the Grand Maester and the Lord Commander before warily looking at the new arrival into the bare hall. It was, Tywin realized, the same modestly sized room that Viserys Targaryen’s body had been brought to. The difference was that it was now stripped of furniture. The only ‘decorations’ within the room were nine corpses spread out over old oilcloth sheets on the floor.

“Lord Commander, I would like to know the details of what happened.” Tywin began and watched as the other man turned and, with rigid politeness, bowed and began to speak.

“Lord Tywin, from what I can gather the Lady Gwyn Parren and Lady Walda Frey had gone down to the kitchens before sunrise to procure a safe breakfast for the Princess. A matter in deference, I should add, to the earlier attempt against the life and welfare of Prince Oberyn and Princess Lyarra’s unborn child.” Selmy stated. “I believe there is significance to this not being the first incident.”

“I concur.” Twyin agreed calmly, facing the man with nothing but the cold professionalism he’d worn in the face of even the worst of the Mad King’s ranting; something he noted that Selmy returned in precisely equal measure from similar experience. “Please, proceed.”

“On their return from the kitchens they stumbled upon Amory Lorch.” He nodded towards a fat corpse with one hand lying in a mangled heap upon its chest, separate from the savaged end of its arm, and a face that had been caved in and minced by the repeated strike of some heavy blade. “He had eight men with him within the Red Keep. They had killed four Dornish guards with a crossbow before one managed to destroy the weapon, and then both of the ladies were forced to defend themselves.”

“I am surprised to such young ladies could do so in the face of hardened warriors.”

“They are most resourceful ladies, Lord Tywin.” 

“So it seems.” Tywin observed as he looked down at the dead men at his feet. “Please, proceed.”

“Princess Lyarra’s direwolf was likely a great factor in their survival, but the Princess Lyarra has some skill with a sword. The Lady Gwyn had lured Amory Lorch away. In followed her into the black gallery where the Princess came upon them. Lady Gwyn was stabbed in the leg by Lord and the Princess engaged him. Lady Walda arrived, having seized a mace from the displays, and the direwolf did as well. Lady Gwyn eventually regained her feet and brought a… cook’s cleaver into the matter. Between the various skills and weapons of the ladies and the wolf, Amory Lord and the guard that had gotten past the Dornishmen were all killed. Those three that remained and were holding a door against the Stark guards on the other end of the castle died when Prince Oberyn and his party returned.”

“And where were they?”

“You know as well as I why Prince Oberyn wished Amorcy Lorch dead. He had received word of Lorch’s location and went to avenge his niece’s slaughter, but found it was a ruse and several cutthroats waiting instead.”

“Are any of  _ those _ men live to question?”

“Decidedly not.”

“Pity.” Tywin replied, though he felt nothing but relief. “Then there are  _ no _ survivors?”

“None.” Barristan the Bold’s blue eyes were level and flat.

Lord Tywin didn’t have to ask himself why. He would, of course, pay lipservice to Prince Oberyn’s many enemies. Amongst them he would have to bring up the Tyrells. They held a longstanding grudge for Willas Tyrell’s crippling. Doing so would be but the thinnest of smokescreens and altogether useless.

The fact was that the Martells were the darlings of the smallfolk. A dangerous position, and powerful in its own way as the crowds of King’s Landing had shown. Any action against them that was taken directly was pure stupidity. It was also pointless, as there was nothing that  _ anyone _ would gain from their harm at this point than the satisfaction of doing another injury for base and petty reasons.

“Lord Commander, how did they enter the most secure castle in Westeros?” 

It was a question he felt disgustingly sure that he knew the answer to. It was also one that he knew he had to  _ prevent _ from escaping if it was to be known. He’d spent too long working to bring his family to the highest levels of power to see them brought low because of a foolish oaf of a king or his daughter’s mind having become unbalanced by her children’s deaths.

_ “Had Joanna lived, none of this would have happened.” _ Tywin thought bitterly. His wife would have seen to it that Cersei learned to deal with loss in a healthy manner. She would have shown by example how a beautiful woman tempered her pride with kindness and fair dealings with all around her. It was a  _ husband’s _ job, as lord and master, to be who those who answered to you feared. One had to balance that with kindness to earn loyalty, and Joanna had been a master of that. His partner in all things, his  _ soulmate _ , stolen from his by a living curse who…

Tywin banished such thoughts. He had other matters to attend to. This would require his full attention. He  _ had _ to take matters in hand.

“I imagine they were let in, Lord Tywin.” 

Tywin arched an eyebrow at how the other man didn’t mince words.

“Who do you believe let them in?”

“In such matters, Lord Tywin, I believe we both know that  _ belief _ must be subordinate to  _ fact _ . Two of the men posted at the postern are missing and unaccounted for. They are being searched for now, and I imagine they will hold answers we may seek.”

“The names of these guards?”

To Tywin’s relief the names had no connection with his daughter. They were nothing more than simple gate guards, and not associated with the Westerlands or with Cersei as far as he knew. As Tywin’s knowledge stretched far, this almost assured they were just random servants tasked with a job and then likely eliminated. For all of his daughter’s growing instability, at least she still proved competent enough to remove those who held knowledge dangerous to her foolish, temperamental, schemes.

Tywin listened, detached, as Barristan laid out the timeline of the attack in minute detail. Tywin both seethed and was slightly relieved to hear that Gwyn Parren might die of her wounds. If she did, she would solve the problem of what she knew most tidily. Still, having caught a bride for the Imp could have at least gotten a grandchild of his line for him, and she was the best prospect he’d seen for a proper, Lannister-looking child given how hideous Tyrion was. Cersei had  _ much _ to answer for, Tywin reflected grimly as he agreed to all of Barristan the Bold’s measures and added his own orders to the Goldcloaks.

“Lord Commander?” Jon Arryn entered the room at that point, his expression harried and frustrated. “What is going on? I was at an early meeting with the harbor master and your squire arrived demanding my immediate presence. Is the King-.”

“King Robert’s last raven confirms that he is well, victorious, and on his way home.” Selmy answered. “An attempt was made in the early hours of dawn on Princess Lyarra’s life and that of her ladies. Several of their household guards were murdered in the attempt.”

The Hand of the King went rigid where he stood, but as old as he was Jon Arryn acted immediately.

“Lord Tywin, If you would be so kind as to see if your daughter the Queen would consent to wake and meet me in the Hand’s Tower in an hour’s time I would be much in your debt.” Jon Arryn’s voice was level and kind, as it often was, but Tywin was not fooled.

“Of course.”

“Thank you, Lord Selmy, I am going to the Dornish party’s quarters now to offer my apologies and assurances of justice in this matter.”

Tywin had seen Jon Arryn go to war before for Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon. He’d watched as he put one on the throne and left the other Warden of the North, and then spent years shouldering the burdens of rule himself to keep those he considered his sons safe. Jon Arryn, old, kind, toothless man that he was would topple dynasties for those he loved. While Lyarra Martell was not one of the Old Falcon’s “children” she was Ned Stark’s  _ blood _ . Cersei, Tywin thought grimly, would have much to answer for and would have to be  _ prepared _ to do so.

“I believe justice has already been largely taken care of, Lord Hand, but I shall continue my investigation.” Barristan the Bold bowed and Tywin leaned on the cane he loathed needing as he exited the room and turned in the opposite direction from Lord Arryn.

It took him some time, but he gathered his guards as he went. Eventually he stood in front of the gleaming door to the Queen’s apartments. He left them standing in the hall as he was announced, the door was opened, and he began the most important aspect of dealing with Cersei’s foolishness. Before he cleaned up aught else, he had to take care of this problem at the source.

“Father, is something wrong?”

Cersei, Tywin noted dispassionately, was already fully dressed. Her hair was elaborately done in a crown of golden braids bound around her head. A line of kohl - thin,  _ not _ in the Dornish style - made her green eyes bright and careful tints applied to her lips, cheeks, and lids made up for the pallor her miscarriage had lent to her skin. Dressed in a green silk gown of the fashion she’d popularized, that was halfway between dress and robe, a thin golden chain studded with emeralds circled her throat.

She was the very picture of composed, queenly beauty. Tywin wanted to rub a hand over his face and ask why his children never  _ learned _ anything. It was true that one did not ever show injury or weakness; lions knew neither. It was  _ also _ true that to avoid guilt you should not look like you were ready to face trial an hour after dawn when you never rose before mid-morning. 

Instead of any of that, Tywin merely stepped into the room and stood by the door. Looking at the two women in the room, toadies who his daughter favored and who did and said whatever she willed, he waited until their composed expressions faltered. Then, when Cersei’s lips had thinned at the threatening silence, he spoke.

“Leave us. I would have words with my daughter in privacy.”

They left. Cersei showed a little intelligence in waiting in silence for him to speak. Walking forward deliberately he sat down across from her in a vacated chair. 

“You will pack for a journey. Plan for a three month absence. When Joffrey departs, you will depart as well.”

“ _ What?” _ Her complete shock was rewarding. “Why? What’s happened?”

“There has been an attempt on Princess Lyarra Martell’s life.”

Cersei managed to look realistically and appropriately shocked and horrified.

“Whatever was she doing out of the castle at such an hour?”

“The attack was conducted here, in the guest quarters assigned the Dornish party.”

“No!” 

If nothing else, Tywin noted, his daughter was yet a good actress.

“When word gets out to the peasantry that there has been an attack on the Dornish Princess’ life, the Red Viper’s by extension through their Marks, and the Dornish spread the fact through the servants that Amory Lorch was who killed Princess Rhaenys during the Sack the peasantry of King’s Landing will boil up out of every refuse filled alley and sewer ditch in the city to tear you and your son limb from limb.”

“The smallfolk?” Cersei’s shock spoke for itself, as did the flicker of sudden disgust in her eyes. “Father, the  _ rabble _ mean nothing. They can hardly storm the castle walls.”

“They will not need to if the kitchen staff let them in.”

A flicker of unease played through her green eyes.

“Father, I don’t - I have done nothing-.”

“I do not care what you have or have not done. You are my daughter and the Queen and I will preserve our family’s position and prerogatives.” Tywin replied, enunciating each word like a boulder falling from the Rock’s walls and down onto any foolish enough to attempt a siege. “Nor will the smallfolk, or for that matter,  _ your husband _ . Ned Stark’s daughter, more importantly,  _ Lyanna Stark’s niece _ , was attacked within these walls while under  _ guest right _ and the King’s own protection. The second such attack if you count the poisoning attempt.”

Distantly, Tywin was pleased that there was not even a flicker in her green eyes. She maintained her look of tragic, shocked, innocence and deep offense. At least she remained in possession of her faculties to that level.

“Do you find it interesting, Cersei, that I am the first to bring you news of this?”

His daughter paused then and her eyes tracked to his before she frowned.

“My safety and Joffrey’s should be paramount.”

“Indeed, and yet the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard did not set an increased guard around either of your chambers, did he?”

“No.”

“Nor has he sent anyone to speak to you of the matter.”

Cersei said nothing at that, but Tywin could see the hard glittering sheen of anger in her eyes. He wished it was fear. That would have been a  _ reasonable _ response. Cersei was not so stupid to miss the significance of these actions. Selmly was a dedicated, honorable man. He would have secured the royal family’s safety immediately, before he did aught else after rushing to the scene. Instead he had not said or done anything in relation to Joffrey and Cersei beyond ascertain they were in their quarters, that their quarters were watched, and that they remained in them. Actions that made sense only if you accepted that the Queen or her son were presumed to be the most likely guilty parties.

“In three quarters of an hour I will escort you to the Tower of the Hand. There you will speak to Lord Arryn.”

“I will be glad to express my shock and distress, Father. Might I also visit the Princess? She is my guest, and her safety  _ is _ my concern.”

“I think it is best if you do not.”  _ Don’t overplay it, daughter _ .

“Will Robert meet us later at Casterly-.”

“Your  _ son _ is going to Casterly Rock.  _ You _ will go to the Suthton motherhouse on the shores of the God’s Eye on pilgrimage to beg for a fruitful womb and repent your sins.”

Cersei stared at him in shock and Tywin sat back.

“Your husband is six million gold dragons in debt. His rule hangs by a thread. You are massively unpopular with the people, the nobility has lost their fear of you and believe your son is mad.”

“My son is maligned by those unworthy to lick his boots!”

“I speak of the beliefs of the people who you must rule, Cersei. Tell me, how shall you govern the seven kingdoms if they do not  _ intend _ to obey?”

“Just as you put down the bleating sheep who mocked grandfather!”

“How?”

Cersei looked at him as if he had asked her a ridiculous question.

“The forces of the Westerlands are undefeated in battle in your lifetime, Father.”

“And when I am dead?”

Again she looked at him as if his words were inconceivable. Tywin would never admit to such a thing as exhaustion. Instead he credited it as frustration.

“No king can rule without allies, as Maegor discovered. Aerys burned his and found the same and the Mad King had  _ more _ support than you would, Cersei, for you are not the king.” Tywin drove the point home with the quiet, emotionless voice of factuality. “You are a Queen who is at the end of her childbearing years and has produced only one son. A son out of favor with his father.”

“Robert  _ owes _ us!”

“Indeed he does, and more than he can pay.” Tywin replied in disgust and rose. “However, you have already seen who he chooses to repay in our stead. What few loyalties Robert Baratheon holds dear are clear. Prepare your things, Cersei. You will make your journey as soon as the investigation into this idiotic travesty has ended.”

Cersei sat, then looked up carefully.

“I will not be leaving immediately.”

“If you flee the Red Keep in such a manner I doubt you will return to it.” Tywin stood up. “Is there anything of which I should be made aware, as Master of Laws, before I leave you?”

Tywin allowed the implication to settle between them. What did he need to know to clean this up? Had his daughter left some trace or evidence that, when discovered, would put her head on the block?

“Nothing, father. Please convey my deepest sympathies to the Dornish Party for what they have been through.” She paused, and with the perfect expression and tone of worry, went on. “Father, you said there was an  _ attempt _ . Were the injuries… serious?”

“The Lady Gwyn Parren was recieved a sword wound to the leg of some kind, but I am told it is not crippling and shall not be fatal if the wound remained uninfected.” Tywin replied. “I am sure you are  _ much _ relieved.”

Cersei managed to look quite pleased and gently, almostly motherly, in her happiness to hear it. Her concern was even realistic as she settled back in her chair. She went on in the same vein.

“And the Princess? In her condition this cannot be good for her babe.”

“I have heard nothing of Princess Lyarra.”

“Well, she shall be in my prayers. Who would do such a thing?”

_ She wasn’t overplaying it _ , Tywin noted and hoped that this would perhaps jar  _ some _ sense of caution into his daughter’s head. Surely whatever mental upset had resulted from losing her children to the plague must be passing. Another babe would do her nothing but good, he thought, and noted with some relief that three months time for a pilgrimage would be just what the maesters had suggested to give her womb a chance to recover.

“Lord Commander Barristan is tasked with finding out, and as Master of Laws I shall certainly keep you abreast.” Tywin replied, adding as he stood and turned to go. “Ser Amory Lorch seems to have been central to the assassination attempt.”

“No doubt he felt he could kill the princess easily and thereby neutralize her husband as a threat to his own life. So much of the castle’s staff is from the Westerlands; some cousin likely let him in and has since fled.”

“I am sure that is what we will discover when we investigate.” Tywin replied, because his daughter’s words left him quite sure that they would.

If she had no other skills or intellect for governance, Tywin noted, at least she knew how to cover her tracks. He would make it a priority to take whatever shell she had constructed around herself and strengthen it until Ser Barristan could do nothing to pierce it. The man was honest, competent, and noble. He was neither subtle nor brilliant, and in this Tywin knew he would outmaneuver him easily. That he had to at all left a bad taste in his mouth.

  
  


* * *

 

“Forgive me.”

The first words out of his mouth tore Oberyn’s throat as raw as his heart. Lyarra lay on their shared bed, a sheet cast over her body after he’d closely examined her twice. He couldn’t push the fear for her or for their child out of his mind. His heart remained locked in combat with the apple of his throat, as it had been since he’d realized what a fool he was.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Lyarra demanded quietly as she turned to sit on the bed,  drawing the sheet around her.

Oberyn slipped down to his knees and tangled his hands with hers in her lap. Her gray eyes were nearly black in the candlelight and her hair a cape of tangled curls catching the light in little silvery arches. Oberyn let out a breath and brought her hands to his lips. She was angry, but she was also shocked and worried to the point where it was being projected calmly at him. She was, he realized,  _ waiting _ . For what, he did not know, but Oberyn took it as the gift it was.

“I feared that our fight and the stresses of this cursed place were putting the babe at further risk. I more than doubled the guard. Ghost was with you. I took a more than adequate force with me to kill Lorch, or respond to any threat that might await me. I believed that I could kill the prick and be back here to arrange our departure before you awoke.” Oberyn replied. “Lyarra, forgive me for leaving you in danger. I was wrong, as you told me before, I am not invincible, but acquit me of being careless again so soon after my first offense.”

“ _ Did _ you have enough men with? For - you said there was a trap.”

“Five men awaited me, but I could have killed them easily alone. They were nothing more than hopped up footpads.” Oberyn replied in disgust. “I should have just brought Damien and Ulwyck, instead I left you with too few-.”

“Oberyn, stop, not even Ser Arron can defend himself against a crossbow bolt fired in close quarters.” Lyarra rubbed a hand over her face and Oberyn quickly rose to sit beside her and gather. “That’s how they managed to get past our guards…  _ Gods _ , Oberyn. They’re dead. What will I tell their families?”

“ _ We _ will tell their kin that they died honorably, protecting their princess and the ladies of her party from death at the hands of the same filth who killed Elia’s daughter.” Oberyn felt something in his chest release, clench, and then… dissipate, like the sea’s morning fog in the hot Dornish sun. “Rhaenys has her revenge.”

Something inside him could not believe it. He had waited more than the length of Lyarra’s life, or nearly so, for this moment. Yet inside he fellow strange. Hollow, light, almost confused at the reality of it. The beautiful little girl who’d been the light of his sister’s life was still dead and he grieved her, but at least now he could close his eyes at night and know the man who’d done so no longer threatened the other children of the world. At least now he need not picture  _ his _ daughters at the end of the worthless piece of excrement’s sword.

“Aye.” Lyarra let out a watery laugh, her face pressed into his neck. She pulled back to look up at him. “Are you wroth that it was not you?”

“No.” He replied simply, and kissed her softly, pulling back to go on. “Mayhaps it is even better justice; he shall not step foot in hell without having learned that not all little girls are easy prey.”

“Gwyn was going to cut his head off and give it to you.”

“She’s ever been a considerate girl, but there wasn’t much left of it, was there? What in the Seven Hells happened to his face.”

“A meat cleaver and Gwyn being… persistent.”

“I can imagine.” Oberyn all but hissed and for a moment felt a rush of fierce pleasure at the memory of his ruined face and battered body.

“And who shattered his knees?”

“Walda found a mace.”

“I now see what my next gift shall have to be to the lady. Most impressive. You made good use of your sword.”

“My favorite gift to date.”

Oberyn barked out a weak laugh, but it was one born of stress, worry, and the encroaching sandstorm building inside of him that was held back only by his need to hold this woman. He reached down and petted the soft arc of her belly through the sheet. His babe had just barely begun to change her body. His ninth daughter  _ must _ hold strong to her mother. He could not watch his hope washed away in blood because of his impulsiveness. She leaned into his touch and her quiet tears stilled to nothing as she reached up to stroke his hair.

“Oberyn… You should have woken me.”

“I should have.” He agreed weakly, holding her as if he was afraid she would shatter; he almost was.

“You musn’t do it again, Oberyn. I cannot keep doing this.”

“I will not go off to battle, war, or such while you sleep again.” Oberyn promised fiercely. 

“ _ Promise.” _

“By the Old Gods and the New, Lyarra, I promise to wake you ere I go to do something stupid and violent.”

“I will never sleep again, but thank you.” His wife let out a rough breath and looked up at him, young, exhausted, frightened in retrospect, and now  _ angry _ . “Oberyn, this is  _ intolerable _ . I will not stay here a moment longer. I won’t have  _ Arya _ here a moment longer, or Gwyn, or Walda or father’s party either. We have  _ guest right! _ Does that mean nothing to these people? At least Walder Frey himself had no part of those of his get who rushed us at the Twins. You know was well as this is no random thing!”

“A force that large would not get accidentally into the Red Keep.” Oberyn agreed harshly and looked at her, his heart leaping as his anger kindled, pleased with her agreement. Darting, fast as any serpent between the thorns of an acacia, the fury twined round his heart and retrieved it from his throat to return it to the seeth pool of hatred in his chest. “We both know who is to blame. They are  _ always _ to blame.”

“I don’t want to  _ blame _ , Oberyn, I wish to  _ leave _ .” Lyarra countered, then her voice suddenly lost all of the maturity her solemn nature and intelligence usually leant her. “I want to go  _ home _ .”

His heart ached for her and he nuzzled her temple and pressed a kiss there.

“If by that you mean Winterfell, I cannot oblige you. If you mean Sunspear? We’re leaving as soon as tide is with us; that is late this evening.” Oberyn agreed and reluctantly stood. “The ship is being prepared now. I have sent a rider out to find your father and the King’s Party to inform him of this.”

Lyarra nodded and Oberyn stepped forward.

“Feel free to disagree with me, darling, but I feel you are not adequately punishing me for this.”

“I’m too tired.” 

Oberyn felt his temper spike at the heavy exhaustion behind those words and he eased her down into bed with soft caresses and promises that they would not be long in the cursed place that had so tried them both. Settling her amongst the pillows he stroked her hair, careful of the tangles. Then he repositioned the candle stand so it was not so close to the bed, having to step around the sleeping white direwolf that was taking up a great deal of the room’s floor space. Ghost had more than earned her rest on the cool stone tiles, however.

“ _ Rest _ , Lyarra, and let our babe do the same. I am going to send Walda in to stay with you. If you have any pains, there is going to be a maester I trust in the solar waiting. Ser Arron and Ser Dezial shall be there, just outside this door as well. Ser Dezial will come for me at the  _ slightest _ pain, yes?”

She nodded and closed her eyes, seeming to sink further into the pillows by dint of that alone. Letting out a breath, Oberyn forced himself to release her hand back into her custody. Having broken that last physical connection he let himself out of the room. Before he shut the door he caught Walda’s eyes and nodded within.

“Attend your Princess, Lady Walda.”

The Lady was clean, bathed, and dressed in one of her nicer gowns. She curtseyed to him and quickly followed his directions, shutting the door to the bedchamber behind her. Oberyn was pleased she’d taken note of the image they would want to project. Lyarra could and would wait comfortably, however. She could bathe when she was no longer so exhausted. Looking around the room he did not see a figure he  _ should _ have spied immediately.

“Ser Arron, where is the Lady Arya?”

“She and Nymeria are in with the Lady Gwyn, who was awake and wished company.”

“Maester Rafel?”

The Maester from the Reach had come and gone, but Oberyn was not without connections in King’s Landing. He’d sent word and a friend of his citadel days had come up from further down the coast. Normally Maester Rafel served the Citadel itself, faithfully gathering weather and current data on Blackwater Bay from an hour’s ride beyond the capital. There the Citadel kept a small, bare, tower house to observe the stars and weather conditions. There was a fishing village just around it, however, and Rafel had written him laughingly of having earned two unexpected silver links in his chain from serving the medical needs of the small community. Midwifery was especially in demand around so many sailors and those that kept their company.

“The Lady Gwyn is weak from blood loss, but I think dosing her again would be a mistake. She’s nervous and needs reassurance, Your Grace, and it would be best if we let her have some time with another young lady to chatter a bit before we got her to sleep again.”

Oberyn nodded his agreement and turned to leave the room. As he approached the door one of the guards outside knocked twice on the door. Lord Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, Warden of the East, and Keeper of the Gates of the Moon had arrived.

Oberyn opened the door himself, quickly. Jon Arryn paused, startled to look directly into the face of the man he’d expected to be announced and led to as protocol demanded. Oberyn stepped out of the door and closed it behind him, locking his wife away. 

Jon Arryn silently stepped back and wit the quick flicker of a statesman’s eyes took in Oberyn’s appearance. Oberyn said nothing and let him. He knew what Jon Arryn saw. 

Oberyn had donned his armor again. Not the armor he wore when he wished to make an impression. Nor had he donned the plate he wore on the lists. He wore the same scale male and boiled leather he’d worn in the melee; armor that had served him well for years in warfare both public and private. His sword was belted at his waist and three daggers were visible. 

“Lord Oberyn, I am here to offer his majesty’s deepest apologies and the assurance that the King’s Justice shall be visited upon those who have wronged you swiftly and without mercy.”

“Mine wife has been through a trying time and an injured girl rests within, Lord Arryn, I would not speak of such things within earshot of either.” Oberyn replied. “I believe the ladies have been through more than enough.”

“Of course.” Lord Arryn’s response was honestly heartfelt and Oberyn was surprised to note that the tension lines around his eyes seemed to hold real worry. “Walk with me?”

Oberyn inclined his head and allowed that he would. It suited his purposes. He would speak to the Hand and then avoid the King altogether. If the tides permitted, they would leave this place before the Usurper even returned. His wife would lament not seeing her father, but they could stop at Duskendale or some other port and await him. Whatever Robert Baratheon thought of the matter could  _ be damned _ .

“I have not heard from Lord Gargalen yet this morning. I cannot believe he would sit idle during what happened.”

“Mine uncle did not. His quarters, however, are at the opposite end of the hallway, around the corner. Like several in Lord Stark’s party they were secured in their quarters by wooden wedges driven around their doors with a heavy hammer. Five of House Stark’s guards were also killed in craven silence with a crossbow to assure them success at this venture, I feel I must add.”

“I am aware, and they shall also have their justice.” Lord Arryn’s eyes closed and his lips turned down. “A simple and effective means to secure a door, however. It is how they secured various hallway doors they passed on their way to your quarters as well, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“Ser Barristan told me that Lady Gwyn’s wounds are not fatal. How bad are they,  _ truly _ ?”

“As a lady under  _ my _ protection and care you need not trouble yourself over her condition. Indeed, I would say it is obvious that the King has  _ not _ .”

“This is a conversation I would prefer to have at leisure, and in a more secure location, Prince Oberyn.” The Hand replied with ironbound calm. “However, instead I would offer you an alternative. The Queen should now awaits me in the Tower of the Hand that I might have words with her about how this has occurred. I would invite you to join me in speaking to her. As the most aggrieved party, of course.”

Oh, it was  _ tempting _ . To picture the smug, over-pretty face of the Lion’s daughter as she faced  _ him _ . The woman who’d crawled over his sister’s body and that of her babes to claim a tainted crown. If a single song, softly hinting by a stretch of the imagination that her son might not be trueborn, was enough to launch Tywin Lannister’s daughter into a screaming fit then Oberyn knew he could wring far greater trouble from the woman’s twisted mind. He could feel the bloodthirsty pleasure of bringing about her end and the fall of her family writhing inside him in delight; a caged monster almost set free.

Oberyn could also feel, however, the hovering, wet cloak of his soulmate’s exhaustion. Her fear tainted his world. It was a distant thing, still difficult to touch and impossible to hold, but he had tasted that terror as he put his spear through the throat of one of the footpads lurking in the whorehouse where Lorch had been claimed to be, and known it for what it was. It was the bitter tang of selfishness, and it was a drought he knew well. More time and face had been lost by House Martell in trying to repair the damage  _ he _ had caused by trying to raise his country to a war they would have lost after his sister’s death than Oberyn wished to reflect on. How much more could Doran have done, how much faster could he have worked, had Oberyn not endangered his very  _ House _ with his impetuousness?

“Mayhaps my life has not taught me as much as it should, varied and…  _ colorful _ as my experiences have been, Lord Hand, but perhaps at least it has taught me some of the value of my brother’s patience.”

“Your Grace?”

“If you wish to speak to Dorne or one who speaks in her name, you shall have to come to Sunspear and my Prince.” Oberyn replied and found his voice calmer than he would have thought, and far quieter. “I am done with this place. My party leaves with the tide, and I will have no more speech with anyone.”

Jon Arryn stiffened, but his faded blue eyes were not surprised.

“Lord Stark would be deeply grieved to miss parting with his daughters.”

“We will sail to Duskendale and await him.”

“You have not taken leave of the King.”

“I would count on  _ you _ to convey all appropriate sentiments then, lest he mistake the meaning of our departure.”

Oberyn let the meaning hang in the air, like the putrid flesh of a corpse set in a cage for the vultures. He was breaking all protocol. It was an insult to the King’s house. Jon Arryn surveyed him for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

“Mayhaps a quiet, swift departure is for the best, then. Peace is much to be desired in King’s Landing.”

_ “Do not stir up the smallfolk and I will say what needs to be said to maintain things as they are.” _ The unsaid words hung in the air between them and Oberyn wished to gather them up and weave them into a garrote to choke the old man. He did nothing but nod, however. He had been hasty enough for many days. Now his responsibilities were clear; it was time to get those in his party who were vulnerable clear of this place. He would briefly adopt, rather than merely adhere, to Doran’s way: his pound of flesh would wait, accrue interest, and in time they would pay.

Given how the could and  _ would _ work this crime against the very foundation of the values of their society against the King Oberyn did not think they would wait so long. Quentyn should return soon from Essos, with any luck, and if he had a Dragon bride all the better. Oberyn’s path was clear now, and if it was littered with the bodies of his enemies?  _ So be it _ .

“Then I bid you goodbye for the present, Lord Arryn, and shall return to continue making arrangements.” Oberyn offered the man the briefest of bows. “The tide departs with the evening, and I would do the same.”

 

* * *

 

The wing of the guest house that Lord Monford Velaryon was in  _ crawled _ with guards. Most were of House Stark and House Martell, but there were others. Outside Goldcloaks lingered, though at a great and nonthreatening distance and with severe orders from the Hand himself that they were to do nothing to inhibit the movements of the King’s guests and their own men.

It was a mockery of safety, Monford thought viciously as he made his way through those guards. It also made him grateful for his looks. His pale ivory-blonde hair got him past the guards of both houses easily, and the white and sea-green of his tunic served as extra verification. It earned him a few dark looks from the Northerners, of course, for whom  _ ‘Loyalist’ _ was still a dirty word.

For the moment, at least. Monford found himself anticipating Lord Eddard Stark’s presence with something other than exasperated grief for once. He blamed the boy Eddard Stark had been not at all for what he’d done. Brandon Stark’s death had been the unnecessary result of stupidity. Rickard Stark’s death had been a tragedy.  _ All _ of it was to be laid at  _ Aery’s _ feet, however, and the madness that had infected his mind and his rule.

_ “Ah, Rhaegar, why did you have to act in such secrecy and haste?” _ He mourned inside the vaults of his mind, old regrets lapping like storm-waves around his ankles.  _ “Why not secure the Lady’s hand more covertly, or better still - more openly? The Dornish would not have denied you a paramour had you conducted it in their own manner. To runaway so foolishly with a Lord Paramount’s daughter…” _

Had  _ Rhaegar _ been king the realm would not be up to its eyebrows in debt. King’s Landing would not have become mired in corruption under Littlefinger’s brief reign as Master of Coin. Not to mention the incompetence and ambivalence of those who’d held the office beforehand. Rhaegar had wanted to cleanse the Goldcloaks, clean up the city, and assure prosperity and protection. What he was so desperate to protect them again, Monford didn’t know, not beyond his obsession with prophecy and his vague insistence that trials were ahead for them all. Monford did know, however, that even at his dreamiest and most vague Rhaegar had been better prepared to rule than the oaf they had now, his mad son, or the harpy they now called Queen.

“Lord Monford Velaryon to see the Prince’s Household.” He stated firmly once he’d gotten to the inner chambers. “If you please, Ser Ulwyck.”

“This is not the most convenient time, Lord Velaryon.”

“I am aware of this, but I would not miss the chance to reassure myself of the Princess’ safety in person. Convey to the Prince that I will wait, if time cannot be made, but I dearly wish to see him before his party departs.”

“And what do you know of our party’s departure?”

“That it is inevitable after such an insult.”

The current heir to Hellholt was stone faced, but he saw agreement in the man’s black eyes.

“Wait here.”

Monford nodded and stood as the knight turned and opened the door that led into the guest solar granted the Prince. Then he waited. As he did he noted another man standing only a few paces down the hallway. Ser Ulwyck’s broad shoulders had blocked his view of the man, as had a pilaster. 

The man was olive skinned, though more in the way of Essos than Dorne. His dark brown hair was mixed with gray and fiercely curly. He wore a closely trimmed, thick goatee to match.

His clothing gave a few more clues to his identity. He wore loose, plain trousers tucked into high boots of good leather. A sleeveless doublet of good brocade, but not overly wrought or expensive material, was buttoned over a tunic of dark green cotton, tightly woven. His cloak hung comfortably from his shoulders, and was another hint, for it was a purple so dark it was nearly black.

The sword at his hip gave him away, however. Thin with a fine guard and of beautiful make, it was not overly fancy. It was, however, the honed and well-used blade of a man whose light steps and posture spoke volumes of his origins. What a Bravo was doing in the hallway outside Prince Oberyn’s quarters was beyond him. Five years ago Monford would have guessed a lover, but they knew how Marks worked in Braavos just as they did everywhere else.

“Good afternoon.” It never hurt to be polite. 

The man regarded him with curious brown eyes, sharp and bright as the Bravo answered in his rich foreign accent.

“Do you find it so, Lord Velaryon?”

A Bravo who knew the House colors and symbols of the Crowlands. More interesting yet. Monford nodded back and carried on; it would pass the time while he waited.

“Not particularly, however, it’s generally considered polite to greet people so.”

“I have always found it a universal peculiarity that all cultures seem to favor some form of comforting lie as a greeting.”

“Perhaps it speaks to the nature of man to reassure himself in troubled times.”

“Or the comparative value of self-deception in the lives of troubled souls.”

“Aren’t most souls troubled?”

“If so, it certainly explains the propensity for lying.”

Monford’s lips twitched up an ache began to settle behind his left eye. He’d nearly expired from a complaint of the heart when he’d heard of the attack on the Princess. Did it mean the Lannisters knew? Had she been injured? Had she lost her child? Monford had no idea, but considering the suspicion (for certain as he was he had no  _ proof _ ) so dear to his heart, he  _ had _ to know that she was well. 

Perhaps second only to that he was desperate to know if Oberyn Martell knew the reason for the attack. Monford preyed it was just the Prince of Tongues being mad again, or the Queen’s pettiness that had created this situation. If it was some inkling of the truth of her origins… Monford knew in his  _ bones _ that Lyarra Martell had been born not of Ned Stark’s loins, but his sister’s  _ womb _ . He  _ knew _ . Her music, her quiet, her solemn nature. It wasn’t Ned Stark’s cold Northern blood, but her father’s constant turn to reflection that sang in her blood. She had Rhaella’s nose and the lips Rhaegar shared with two dead uncles.

The King  _ definitely _ did not know. If the Lannisters had the slightest inkling… Monford didn’t know what to think. Could they, as little support as they had, openly try and kill Lyarra Martell? It would trigger a war, not just with Dorne but with the North as well. Monford had seen with his own eyes how Stark loved the niece he’d claimed as his bastard daughter. Would they risk that with an open declaration? Mayhaps not, but if they  _ knew _ and this assassination attempt failed then even the cold old bastard himself, Tywin, might venture to just speak the truth and watch as the king went mad with bloodlust again and war be damned.

The door opened and Ser Ulwyck returned to his post.

“The Prince will see both of you now.”

Monford quashed his annoyance at the commoner, whoever he was, being invited in as well. Hopefully it was for the right reasons. If it was so that Prince Oberyn could make haste out of the capital, then Monford would man the damned boat’s oars  _ himself _ . 

He entered the room and immediately blinked at the scene. There was a sureality to seeing Oberyn Martell sitting at a small, slightly battered, campaign desk with a quill scratching rapidly across parchment as he whipped his way through missives. Lord Gargalen sat beside him, a lap desk balanced across his own thighs and a quill in his own hand moving with a more moderate swiftness, though the Lord of Salt Shore set it aside to regard his guests.

That was not where his attention was solely focused, however. Instead Monford’s eyes sought immediately the other figures in the room. His heart catapulted into his throat, but then all but floated down into his chest. The Princess Lyarra sat, pale but composed, on a settee with a book propped open across her thighs. 

She obviously had chosen from her Northern trousseau when dressing. Her gown was of soft velvet, the gray of storm clouds. Someone with skill and delicacy had picked out a series of wolves in white, black, and grey thread around the low round neck of the gown. Thick, belled, sleeves fell down to nearly hide her hands, and at the waist it was loosely cinched by a belt of silver disks set with moonstone. 

Her hair had been freshly brushed and washed. It gleamed in coils and curls as it danced down her back to pool around her hips on the material of the settee. It spread out as a cloak, nearly black, and of finer shade and richer gloss than the carved wood of the elaborate furniture in the room. All that held it back with the thin silver viper curling around her brow, proclaiming to all the rank she held and just who the Gods had wed her to. Had her face not been set in an expression of unhappy, solemn anxiety she would have been the very picture of regal beauty.

“Lord Velaryon, forgive me a moment, I would have this take wing for mine brother’s hand before the hour of the swan.”

“Then curtail your insults to something less poetic, nephew, for we are two hours past noon already and you’ve only a few minutes left to write.” Lord Gargalen observed as he nodded his head. “Monford, how good of you to come by.”

“I refused to be delayed when I heard the news.” He sketched a short bow and turned to where the princess sat.

Lady Walda Frey sat beside the Princess. Across from her sat Lady Jynessa Blackmont and Lady Myria Jordayne. Both of the Dornish ladies looked grim, and there eyes snapped with anger. Only the princess had availed herself of some form of distraction, though he had a feeling the book in her hands was largely being ignored.

“Princess Lyarra, Lady Walda, are you well? My concern was most grave when I heard of this unforgivable assault and the Lady Gwyn’s injury. Is  _ she _ going to recover?”

“The Lady Gwyn will recover with only a scar to tell the tale, if we can keep infection at bay.” The Red Viper answered, his tone short as he stood up and rubbed a hand over his face before raking it through his hair, handing a letter off to a waiting servant. “ _ Move.” _

The servant left at a run.

“I am shaken, but unhurt.” Rhaegar’s daughter offered, her hand drifting off the book and towards her stomach before she quickly altered its course to close the slim tome; it was poetry, he realized, and judging from the cover likely  _ her husband’s _ . “Thanks mainly to the bravery of my ladies.”

“Lady Gwyn drew the attackers away by taunting Lorch.” Lady Janessa replied, and her tone was full of pleased respect for the young girl.

Monford himself hadn’t much liked having a girl with even a passing connection to the Lannisters anywhere near his one last hope to see the  _ rightful _ blood of the Dragons returned to the throne. He’d become less severe in noticing the girl’s choice of antagonizing the queen. Now, however, he found himself willing to kiss the ground the girl walked on if she’d truly saved the Princess’ life.

“Gwyn was very brave.” Lady Walda allowed, her normal rush of enthusiastic chatter doused into a quiet, tentative sort of babble. “We turned the corner just as the man launched his last bolt, and saw the dead guards. One of them thrust a sword right at us, and she shoved the basket she was carrying right at him so his sword caught in it. I grabbed one of the men, and didn’t see what happened next for I was wrestling with him on the ground. I think one reached for Gwyn, too, but she must have stabbed him.”

“There was a man just inside the door with one of her butcher knives shoved into his nethers.” Princess Lyarra clarified, chafing her hands together. Monford sat beside the princess and took her hand. “Ghost was scratching at the door to the bedchamber, which woke me, and I grabbed my sword… I killed him. Ghost raced out and attacked the man wrestling with Walda.”

“Gwyn had called Lorch a piss-drinking donkey-fucker with poxy balls and then took off, I heard him chase after her when she yelled at him.” 

The Bravo, who Monford had almost forgotten chuckled with evil glee at the helpfully graphic obscenity that Lady Walda offered an account of and all eyes turned back to him. Monford’s gaze was arrested halfway as he caught sight of Oberyn Martell’s face, however. The man’s black eyes widened and he lurched up from his seat.

“Syrio Forel?”

“In the flesh.” The Bravo bowed.

“What is the First Sword of Braavos doing in King’s Landing, of all the cursed places? You always said Westeros was a hopped up backwater with barbaric ideals and no notion of basic sanitation!” 

Monford watched as the Prince embraced the foreigner. He also found his estimation of the man leap upwards. The First Swords of Braavos were famed for their skill, and for good reason. 

“Spending half a year in this place has not changed that opinion, though I will admit the barbarism occasionally has its charm.”

“What are you  _ doing _ here?”

Monford also wondered if he’d been wrong about the man being a lover. Prince Oberyn had a rare gift for remaining  _ friends _ with those he slept with. Something even odder considering that he slept with _ everyone _ ; or at least he had for most of his life.

“I am teaching young ladies to dance.”

Oberyn Martell stared at him for a long moment, then his jaw dropped. The prince shut it with a click and then turned to look over at the corner of the room. Then he looked back at a closed door. For a moment he appeared as if he might march over and open it, then his eyes strayed instead to the huge gray wolf curled up in front of it. Monford had forced himself to come within easy reach of the teeth of that wolf’s white sibling, for the princess’ beast was resting at her feet. As he was sitting beside her he was close enough to nudge it easily with his boots; not being an idiot, he did nothing of the sort.

“Lord Stark got your sister  _ dancing lessons _ , did he not, my love?” Oberyn breathed deeply, went to say something else, then decided against it as he brought a hand up to pinch the arched bridge of his nose. 

“He did, My Prince.” Those lovely  _ Targaryen _ lips were twitching in repressed mirth.

The Red Viper stood very still. It was as if he was undecided between two courses. Should he lose his temper in some dramatic disastrous fashion, or should he laugh? Fortunately for all of them, he burst out laughing.

“Who knew Eddard Stark had a sense of humor?” Oberyn Martell finally allowed, a great shuddering breath of laughter coming with it as he shook his head. “ _ Dancing lessons _ . The water dance, but of course. Why teach a girl to promenade who wishes nothing more than a sword in her hand and her enemies blood dripping from her sleeves? Lyarra, I take back precisely one-third of the wretched things I’ve said about the man who sired you.”

_ So he hasn’t an inkling _ , Monford decided and felt himself both relax and become more exasperated.

“Now you understand why it was so essential my sister have a decent sword.”

“Of only the  _ finest _ quality and at my personal expense.”

“Arya loves it.”

“Then you could have at  _ least _ waited to gift her with it until I could see the expression on her face in person.”

As he spoke the Red Viper moved over, casting a sardonic and sharp black eye on where Monford was sitting and holding the princess’ hand. Lord Velaryon stood and relinquished his place with grace. He would rather he not have had to. This was a girl he should have dandled on his knee and showered in gifts, not been isolated from and ignorant of while she was raised in the empty and frigid North.

“I could.” The Princess replied with a small smile as her husband settled next to her, and if her expression was still solemn her gray eyes were decidedly smug.

The prince leaned down at that point and kissed her, his hand snaking unashamedly over her belly to caress the babe within. Something inside Monford relaxed further. He would not have done so, nor would she even be out of bed, had she lost the prince he was still praying for several times daily. Really, if he continued to light candles in every sept he could find at the pace he was doing he was going to make House Waxley considerably richer.

“I would have you rest further, wife, before we leave.” The Prince said before he turned back to Monford and his other guest. “Monford, I can imagine your purpose. We leave this evening with the tide.”

“I am relieved to hear it.” 

“Syrio, while I am pleased to see again the man who reeducated me so very well during my vainglorious youth, am I wrong to hope that you wished to do more than greet me and bid goodbye to your student?”

“In a way.” The Bravo had taken a seat next to Lord Gargalen and had exchanged a few words with him while conversation drifted elsewhere on the other side of the solar. “I have found Arya far too diligent a student to abandon her half-trained. Have you room for another in your household and on your ship?”

“I do.”

“Good.” 

And with that something in Monford Velaryon released and a great fear ran out of him like poison leaving the blood. His princess -  _ his Queen _ \- was not yet safe. In a few hours, Gods willing, she would be sailing to Dorne in safety, however. The future wasn’t assured by any means, but at least it was no longer hopeless.

 

* * *

“Then Jon said to the squire that Ned had just whipped-.”

“You don’t need to repeat it  _ verbatum _ .” Ned insisted to his foster brother and King as Robert laughed in delight as he retold one of the stories of their time in the Vale to the willing ear of Domeric Bolton.

The story was cut short, however, by the sound of a galloping horse approaching. They were on a broad and comfortable path through the Kingswood now. They had only taken a handful of prisoners and they were chained in the back of one of the Bloody Mummers own wagons of looted goods. The largest part of their train lingered behind them, guarded and supervised by a knight Robert appointed to the task. The Kingslayer joined the two members of the kingsguard who’d ridden with them up with the King, unfortunately, but Ned could ignore the man well enough.

“What the fuck is it now?” Robert scowled at the noise of the rider approaching while Ned felt a great sense of foreboding.

“Something is very wrong.”

“Oh, stop being dour.”

It was a man in the copper scale armor and orange and red livery of House Martell. Ned felt his heart go cold in his chest. The man’s face was set and angry. His expression fierce, and when his eyes roved over the king they all but gleamed with malice before settling on Ned’s face with the grim relief of a man whose task was nearly done.

“Your Grace.” He brought his lathered horse to a halt, bowing jerkily in his saddle to the King before facing Ned. “Lord Stark, an attack has been made on the Princess’ life and two of her ladies within the Red Keep.”

_ “What?” _

Robert’s roar was nothing like the dead stillness that had taken over Ned’s heart.

“While Prince Oberyn was lured out of the castle with tales of his capture, leaving the Princes and all of his company under heavy guard, Amory Lorch and several men armed with crossbows and other weapons were let in into the keep. Fortunately the Princess Lyarra is not without defense. She, the Lady Walda, and Lady Gwyn slew Lurch and two of his guards who got past our own with the help of her direwolf.”

“Is my daughter well?” Ned forced the words out, his heart beating again at the word  _ fortunately _ . “Her child-.”

“The Princess was uninjured and shows no signs of miscarriage, Lady Walda escaped unscathed, but the Lady Gwyn took a blow from Lorch’s sword and when I left Prince Oberyn was working with Lord Mace Tyrell’s maester to try and stem the blood loss before it claimed her life.”

Without a word Ned set his heels to the great black warhorse underneath him. Already prancing and pulling at the bit with his rider’s tension, that was all it took. The beast went off like a shot, his huge hooves churning the up the turf.

“Ned!” The King shouted behind him. “Gods- _ dammit _ man!”

“I’ve lost enough kin to the Red Keep, Robert!” Ned bellowed, forgetting his friend’s rank in his haste. “Keep up or follow at your leisure.”

Beside Ned, not even a pace behind, Domeric Bolton’s fierce bay was galloping and Ned could hear other members of his guard and party racing forward as well with exclamations of their own.

“I’m going to kill this blasted horse!”

Ned had no idea if Robert was complaining, stating a fact, or merely finally showing some feeling for the fine destrier his weight was taking such a toll on. Ned also  _ did not care _ . He’d  _ promised _ Lyanna he’d keep her child safe. It was all his sister had asked of him on her deathbed. She hadn’t begged for her life. She hadn’t asked after the realm or the North or anything else. All she’d done was beg for the fate of the tiny, quiet, red babe she’d brought into the world at the expense of her own future.

He never should have left. Ned’s thoughts raced around, recrimination howling at his heels. He’d known the Queen was not to be trusted. He knew the Crown Prince was mad. Whatever  _ restraint _ Tywin Lannister thought he’d put on his daughter and her unholy offspring was obviously worthless and had been since Ned first arrived at the keep. He was a fool to trust it even so far as to ride into battle beside Robert.

The fact that Ned knew it was his duty to the King to do so didn’t forgive him for not making his own arrangements before he left. He’d barely spoken to his guards. He hadn’t altered their rotations to take into account the protection of the Dornish party.

A part of his mind that was growing more furious by the hoofbeat argued that he should not have had to. He’d  _ trusted _ Oberyn Martell to guard all of those under his protection. He’d trusted him with Lyarra’s life and Arya’s. He’d placed two daughters into the man’s hands, convinced by his ferocity and pride in his own offspring that he would protect them well. Now, for the second time, he’d been so blinded by revenge that he’d abandoned Lyarra  _ again _ and nearly to grief. Gwyn might het die.

_ Are you any better? _ Ned’s subconscious was a cruel thing, though. It whispered and hissed at him.  _ What makes you so fine and responsible compared to him? _ Had Ned asked his sister what she wanted before he wrote to his father pressing Robert’s suit after Jon Arryn had suggested it?

_ No _ , Ned admitted to himself in an endless cycle of grief he’d carried for six-and-ten years now. Grief older than Lyarra. Grief that felt like he would carry beyond his death. _ No, _ he hadn’t once thought of what Lyanna would want. He’d wanted Robert for a brother in truth and figured that being a Lord Paramount’s wife would make any lady delighted. That Robert’s laughter would be infectious for her as well. He’d just  _ assumed _ his friend would give up the whoremongering, and why would it bother Lyanna anyway? Men did so, before they were wed. Robert would calm down.

_ He hasn’t. Lyanna was right all along. Robert is irresponsible. Robert has littered the realm with his bastards. He’s become everything she claimed he would. _

Ned tried to concentrate on riding, but his mind wouldn’t let him be. A battle was going on inside him as his rage at himself, old and honed, fought against a building fury at the world in general. Oberyn Martell was but one target as a lifetime of self control began to fray around the edges and he frantically searched for more rope to bind it in place.

He hadn’t written Lyanna, either, not once nor at any time after Harrenhal. He’d been afraid to, if he was honest. She’d maintained during the entire tourney that she wanted no part of being Robert’s wife. She’d told Ned to his  _ face _ that she would not consent to the marriage. She’d entreated him to convince Robert to agree to break the engagement lest both their families be shamed. He hadn’t taken her seriously.

He hadn’t even considered that she’d left under her own power  _ knowing _ she’d said those things to him. Instead he’d just gone along with Brandon’s furious letter claiming Rhaegar had stolen Lyanna away.  _ That _ was the story he’d related to Robert and Jon Arryn in his worry. He’d stoked the fire of Robert’s fury with his own. In those days he’d been quiet, yes, compared to Brandon and Robert. He’d still been a boy who hadn’t yet tasted his second decade of life. He hadn’t learned the value of control yet, or the terrible price of losing it.

His father’s letter had arrived, penned frantically in just a dozen lines, on the day Rickard Stark must have left Winterfell for the Red Keep. It had urged caution.  _ “Do not turn yourself over to the King’s men for any cost.” _ The letter had said.  _ “Do not antagonize them either, and spread no tales of Lyanna having been kidnapped or raped by the prince. You know not what you do, nor do you understand what you are involved in.” _

Oh, how he’d  _ cursed _ himself as he charged up that tower. An ill-gotten sword in his hands, Dawn falling to the floor as Ser Arthur Dayne lay dead of a knife to the back in the red sand below. Two other Kingsguard and all his companions save Howland dead in the bloody mountains of Dorne.

There had been no kidnapping. His father wasn’t merely urging caution on Brandon’s behalf while Ned’s brother still breathed in the Black Cells and might yet have been saved. Rhaegar was an idiot. He was a fool. He was a  _ failure _ at everything a ruler should be, but that wasn’t the tragedy that made Ned Stark wish to rip at his hair and beard and howl his fury at the cold and unforgiving stars.

No, Ned’s hatred lived on in  _ his _ folly and  _ his _ stupidity and  _ his _ thoughtless lack of responsibility. His father had sent him to the Vale to learn to be a warrior. He’d wished him to gather the skills it took to be a man and learn how to support Brandon as his elder brother ruled the North. Along the way he’d gained an unlooked for brother,  _ aye _ , but Ned Stark had forgotten the first lesson that  _ all _ Starks must learn and hold sacred.

_ “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” _ Arya Flint had said that to him in some of his earliest memories, before his grandmother had died and left his father with a wife and small children to raise without family on hand. He didn’t know if she’d gotten it from her days in the mountains, or if she’d gotten it from her husband, but the words remained graven in his mind now. Ned had forgotten that above all else,  _ family _ must come first. That one reality that had bound he and Cat together through fire and blood and war and lies and all of the difficulties of coming to a marriage as strangers. Now it rang mockingly in his mind again as he charged back to the Red Keep and swore to himself that if he lost  _ one more drop _ of Stark blood to that damned place he was going to tear it down stone by stone and melt that cursed seat into a puddle of steel and cast it into the bay.

 

* * *

 

Arya Stark had a  _ mission _ and it sang in her blood like the most joyful song she’d ever heard. It was like the wind through the trees of the wolfswood. It was like the ice cold waters of the streams that flowed cloaked in the shadows of the trees. It was the steam winding up through the branches of the Heart Tree in Winterfell’s sacred godswood.  _ This _ wasn’t just a  _ lesson _ anymore.

As such Arya had shimmied out of the window in Gwyn’s cramped little room and carefully perched on the window’s edge. She did not look down. She did entertain the thought that this part of her mission might have suited Bran a little better. Still, she did what she must and shimmied to the next window over. Letting herself into the solar in her father’s empty guest quarters, she dropped to the floor and settled Needle on her hip. Then she thought back to how she’d gotten on this mission in the first place.

She’d gone in to sit with Gwyn. Gwyn had been in a real sword fight. Gwyn had  _ killed _ a man. Yes, she’d had help, but Arya was torn between simple fear for her sister and her friends and being wild with envy that they’d been in a battle of their own! She might have felt joyful about it had she not felt something inside her stifle and… shift… at the sight of the bodies of the men who’d died in the hallway.

Not Lorch’s men. Arya’d been half-curious to see dead enemies. It was seeing the glassy eyes of the Dornish guards that had been so very  _ wrong _ . These were men who’d laughingly played swords with her on the journey South. They’d joked and made wagers about which of the Sand Snakes she’d get beaten up by (as if she’d allow that to happen,  _ hah!) _ and encouraged her to fight and roughhouse in ways that she’d  _ never _ imagined would happen while her mother scolded her and Septa Mordane compared her endlessly to Sansa in the cruelest way possible.

_ “Well, Septa Mordane is gone now and Sansa writes me nice letters!” _ Arya thought in triumph as she listened carefully at the hallway door.

Gwyn had been very pale and very still in bed. It had scared Arya a little. Luckily Gwyn had opened her eyes, and even if her lips looked thin from how she was pressing them together and she blinked a lot, those blue eyes were as sharp as ever. Arya had perked up a little, too, because usually when Gwyn’s eyes had glittered so bright before it meant there was mischief to be had. 

The way that Gwyn’s hands were fisted together but perfectly steady on her coverlet said otherwise. That wasn’t the way Gwyn’s ever nimble fingers reacted when there was mischief to be had. Gwyn was like Arya; she couldn’t sit  _ still _ . If she wasn’t cooking she was embroidering, if she wasn’t doing either of those things then Gwyn was looking in dark corners for bugs or was idly tidying the nursery up around Rickon and Bran. This sudden  _ stillness _ was something else.

“Arya,” Gwyn had begun in a tense whisper, “I need your help.”

“With what? I can get the Prince-.”

“ _ No!” _ Quiet, firm denial. “You can’t get anyone else.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a secret!”

Arya had leaned forward, shocked. Gwyn sometimes didn’t tell you things about her past, but as far as Arya knew she didn’t keep secrets from Lyarra. Well, unless you counted not telling the name of the person who killed Prince Oberyn’s sister, but Gwyn had even promised to tell everyone  _ that _ once they weren’t in King’s Landing anymore. This  _ felt _ different, and even Nymeria had perked up outside the door at it; Arya could tell.

“What’s the secret?”

Gwyn had paused to breath a little and licked her lips. Her blue eyes darted to the door. Then they darted back. She went on urgently.

“Arya, who do you think did this?”

“That’s a stupid question.” Arya had scoffed. “Only the Queen or her freak of a son could have let so many people in.”

“Do you want to  _ hurt _ them, Arya?”

“Yes!”

“Then help me, because nothing could hurt House Lannister more.”

Then she’d given Arya some  _ extremely _ specific instructions. Instructions that were strange, but definitely exciting. She didn’t know why it was important that the weird, perfumed fellow like Varys was busy in a long meeting with Lord Tywin and Lord Arryn and the Queen at that exact moment, but it was. Arya decided that when she got back she’d tell them about the weird conversation she’d overheard Lord Varys having in the basement with the shameful Mormont man that her father hated. She’d tell her father too, when he got back.

Arya was  _ sure _ he’d get back before their ship left. He  _ had _ to. Arya couldn’t go to Dorne without telling her father goodbye, and neither could Lyarra!

Still, Arya glanced out the window in the hallway as she snuck out behind the backs of the guards. It wasn’t easy, but she’d learned a lot in her “dancing lessons”. If she could chase and catch cats with her bare hands, if she could find secret ways out of the castle, then she could certainly sneak down into the cellars by the dragon skulls and meat a friend of Gwyn’s!

He sounded like a strange friend, though. Arya didn’t recognize his name. She also didn’t like the fact that Gwyn had insisted so strongly that Arya didn’t need to be afraid of him. That probably meant that Arya  _ should _ be afraid of him, but Gwyn was being weird. Then again, Gwyn was always really  _ careful _ of strangers, so that didn’t make sense. Actually, none of it made sense. After all, since when had Gwyn had friends that Arya didn’t already  _ know _ ?

Arya hurried and scurried, carefully taking all of the back ways she’d learned about in her explorations. She avoided the servants as much by luck as by skill. She avoided everyone else by keeping to places where only servants every bothered to go. Gwyn had told her long ago that Winterfell was  _ different _ than Southron castles because it was really just made so that everyone could get everywhere they had to go as quickly and efficiently as possible. Arya finally understood what the difference was as she saw Southron castles riddled with twisty little hidden passages designed to hide the servants from view. Why bother? Arya couldn’t see what was wrong with servants. Didn’t you want to have them? After all, if you didn’t have servants, you probably served someone else. You’d think the Southrons would be flaunting them, really.

Arya crept up towards the huge black skull of Balerion the Black Dread and looked into its empty eye holes. She nearly jumped when she saw a single yellow eye glowing sinisterly at her from amidst rows of teeth longer than she was tall, but only muttered a particularly nasty curse when she realized what it was. It wasn’t a threat.

“Oh, it’s  _ you _ .” She held a hand out reluctantly to the big, scarred, black tomcat that was winding its way out from between the teeth. 

The cat had a nasty scar across its back that  _ should _ have crippled it, but somehow had not. It was also missing part of one ear and one eye was sealed shut and sunken. Still, its deep rumbling purr was a nice noise. This was the only one of the cats she’d chased that she’d never managed to catch, and it had been who’d led her to the skulls and then further yet into the cellars where she’d heard Varys’ odd conversation and he’d bought the strange box of rocks from the man Arya’s father wanted to behead with Ice.

Arya darted into the shadows of the skull herself when she heard the sound of a someone coming. She blinked when she saw the figure moving in the dim light of a flickering torch. Arya herself had only struck flint here and there in the dark, moving mostly by sound and feel like Syrio had taught her.

The figure was not what she expected. Given how quietly he’d moved she was expecting a small, light, man. Instead she found herself looking at a very large, heavily muscled man. Nor was he what she’d expected at all, for the ugly burn scars that dominated one half of his face were  _ familiar _ . Arya was about to drift further into the shadows and hide totally from the man, maybe even inside the huge dragon skull the way the scarred black cat had. Before she did, however, Arya remembered what Gwyn had  _ said _ about the person she was supposed to meet.

_ “He wears the face I see when I look in the mirror.” _

About three moons after Gwyn had come to stay at Winterfell Arya had been upset and angry because of a bad lesson with Septa Mordane. Then she’d tried to go out and talk Theon into giving her sword fighting lesson, but he’d ignored her. Lyarra had been busy and Sansa had been mad at her and called her Arya Horseface.

Arya had gone to hide in the broken tower. She went there because no-one else would be there to see that she  _ might _ have cried. Only a little. She also went there because she was angry and she wasn’t supposed to play in the broken tower. She’d found Gwyn there with a stoneware jar and a ladder, climbing up into the rafters and gently teasing spiders out of their webs and into the jar with nimble fingers.

Gwyn had known something was wrong. Arya hadn’t wanted to talk, so Gwyn had just started instead. She hadn’t talked much. All she’d done was look for a minute, ask if Septa Mordane was being a bitch (Arya had never heard anyone call the Septa names before because Lyarra always tried to be  _ good _ and she’d suddenly decided she might like their fosterling a little) and then when Arya had agreed she’d fallen silent for a while. Then Gwyn had said,  _ “People used to say that I couldn’t be my father’s daughter because I was blonde and Parrens are always dark. They ignored that I had his eyes because they were being asses, not because they thought any of it was true.” _

Gwyn had let her dump the jar of spiders on Theon’s head later, too.

Now Arya thought of what Gwyn might see when she looked into a mirror. Not what was there, but what she would  _ think _ . Syrio always told her about the value of perception. He spoke of how the  _ best _ swordsmen could strip truth from fiction and see their opponent’s next strike before they even moved. Gwyn was scared all the time and she was angry and she didn’t trust people. None of that was  _ pretty _ .

“Gwyn said you’d know who the only one who could really solve everyone’s problems was.”

The Hound jumped and swore under his breath, peering into the teeth of the dragon’s skull where Arya had slunk while holding the torch as far away from his face as he could.

“Only one who can solve  _ everyone’s _ problems is the Stranger.” The Hound peered down at her from behind his scars and Arya examined them in the light; the weird patches of pink skin on the red and white swirled scars looked odd. “You’re the youngest Stark girl. Has Gwyn lost her mind?”

Arya scowed in return for that. He scowled right back, his dark eyes almost as angry as his voice when he asked in a low growl.

“She’s not dead, is she?”

“No, would you care?” 

He actually stopped to think about that. When he answered Arya was surprised at the real hint of something… almost human in his voice. Even if his words were dismissive, his posture was not. She hadn’t expected that out of the man who’d carried the prince’s bucket of tongues.

“It’d be a shame to see a girl whose baked chicken was that good die.”

Arya felt a hint of real excitement blossom at that, because this was where the real  _ mission _ happened.

“She said I need to go with you into the city. That you were going to take me somewhere and we were going to get something. She said I was to give this to the people at the place we’re gong to.” Arya held up the tightly furled little scroll Gwyn had given her,” She said that they wouldn’t let you in because you’re a man, and that what they gave us would be heavy but you would carry it to the ship while I come back to where I’m supposed to be.”

The man smirked at her. It made him uglier. 

“She tell you that there’s no fucking way in any seven- _ hundred _ Hells I can sneak a  _ Stark _ out of this castle? I don’t care how much you look like a boy in those clothes, girl, with your hair up in that cap. Your face gets any longer you’ll  _ turn into _ a wolf.”

“Your gets any uglier and you’ll turn into a gargoyle.” Arya shot back. “I don’t  _ need _ you to sneak me anywhere. I can get us  _ both _ out.”

He ignored the insult and narrowed his eyes.

Arya grinned sharply and turned, walking into the dark. The big black cat stood at the edge of the proper passageway and with the torch flickering behind her Arya followed the single glowing eye further into the darkness. Behind her Sandor Clegane’s muttered obscenities got nastier the deeper they went. Arya couldn’t  _ wait _ to see how he reacted when they got into the sewers.

 

* * *

 

There were times when it seemed to Varys that his job was an endless series of choices and  _ none _ of them were good. This was, he decided, his punishment for allowing himself to be entirely too caught and too charmed in the Lady Gwyn’s activities. What could he say, however? He wouldn’t live  _ forever _ and  _ someone _ was going to have to keep an eye on Westeros when he was gone. He’d lived a long time and watched and Gwyn Parren was the first of those little sparks of creativity and relentless drive that he’d seen that  _ might _ just fit the needs of Westeros.

He’d had such  _ hope _ for Petyr Baelish. There was another self-made man. A figure who’d scraped his way up from nearly nothing. He’d been so very brilliant. If  _ only _ he’d had it within him to see beyond his own petty desires. As it was, he had not, he’d died of inoculation fever, and Varys was left of both the pleasurable challenge of competition and the delight of watching someone teach themselves how to command the Game of Thrones.

Little Gwyn Parren had such  _ potential _ , though. Varys could now admit he’d been almost foolish in his distraction. He had other plans in the background, of course, now that he’d lost his dearest friend and seen Viserys dead and the princess in exile  _ misplaced _ so badly. The best was the Martells, but the disdain the other kingdoms had for the Dornish would have weighed against them despite their claim to the throne being second beyond the Baratheons. Then there was Lady Shireen, though that would be a weak and distant third place behind Quentyn and Trystane Martell.

He hadn’t even  _ considered _ the Viper. Oberyn Martell was the most Dornish Dornishman he’d ever heard of, after all, and his reputation was such that it would be a hindrance even with Queen Cersei turned into a mockery and a source of treasonous disgust with all her secrets laid bare. Far better stolid Quentyn Martell, who was by all accounts responsible, shy, and  _ reasonable _ in a way that Varys thought would be a refreshing pleasure to work with. If he was not to be convinced to walk away from his Dornish birthright, well, the second of the sons could be convinced to abandon the sunchair and look towards an iron seat. 

He would also be young enough to be influence on the off and unlikely chance that Doran Martell didn’t throw in his own hand. That would be another complication as Doran Martell was the kind of reasonable, subtle,  _ patient _ man who Varys had a great deal of respect and caution in regards to. Such a pity Aerys hadn’t died in Summerhall and left Rhaella to wed again. If Rhaegar had a stepfather like Doran a  _ lot _ would have been different.

Having watched Princess Lyarra, however, Varys had changed his mind with delight. He still didn’t have  _ proof _ of course, but that was being looked into in the dusty records of the Faith. The fact remained, however, that the Viper’s wife had Lyanna Stark’s face shape, coloring, and height, but it was Queen Rhaella’s full lips she pouted thoughtfully out of and those Stark-gray eyes were around and luminous in the way of all of the Targaryens. Add to that the fact that Varys had known fo years that the time of the girl’s birth didn’t add up with the idea that Ned Stark was her father and the explanation was breathtaking.

_ “And you were so busy assuming that Ashara Dayne had made a visit to Brandon Stark in the Black Cells that you didn’t even see it until Monford Velaryon’s starry-eyes all but rubbed your nose in it.” _ Varys chided himself as he stepped quickly out of the secret entrance behind the hearth in his quarters at the Red Keep and nodded in pleasure at finding the bath he’d ordered awaiting him.

The bath was cold, but he accepted it as the price he paid for being thorough. Regretfully he burned a perfectly good disguise in the hearth and set about becoming silk-robed and perfumed again. He yet had much work to do.

Queen Cersei had disposed of the first layer of her patsies most thoroughly. The two guards at the postern gate were murdered quietly by Red Cloaks efficiently enough. So was the maid who’d served to arrange things with Lorch out in the city. Those were just the  _ direct _ ties, however, and even an honest man like Barristan Selmy would have soon gotten to the bottom of that. Jon Arryn, honorable as his name proclaimed him, was even more practical and thusly efficient.

No, if the Queen’s fall was to be delayed, she had to be protected. It rather grated on Varys, but he now saw the benefit of it. He’d been quietly encouraging her madness through an endless series of small irritations he’d made sure she tripped over daily since he’d realized that Viserys Targaryen really  _ was _ dead and his sister unaccounted for in the vastness of Essos. Even with the new information from Jorah Mormont he’d heard nothing there to make him think his original plan was salvageable with the death of his dear friend Illyrio Mopatis. 

Instead Varys had moved on. Making Cersei Lannister sloppy enough to force her and her son’s removal for their madness, or at least getting her to accidentally reveal her incesteous relationship with her twin, had been his fallback. The king was undeniably fertile and the Tyrells ambitious. Young Lady Margaery could become Queen, the King could die tragically, and as dangerous as an infant king would be Varys would have to risk it to get the crown’s debt back under control and assuage the smallfolk before a major revolt occurred.

A ship’s captain from Voltanis and a displaced Ironborn sailor had all found their way to the back of various potshops that morning thanks to Varys efforts. The Essosi captain had been who had brought the two sellswords who’d died in trying to kill Princess Lyarra and her ladies into the keep. They knew the Queen had provided coin in return for an attempt on Renly Baratheon’s life as well as the Kin’gs should either appear in the melee of the tourney. Likewise they had been who had sheltered Lorch at the Queen’s expense.

_ “Why did you have to try and murder the Lady Gwyn, your Grace, let alone catch the entire Dornish household up in it the way that you did?” _ Varys asked the twisted corridors of his mind rhetorically as he began to journey to the Tower of the Hand from his quarters.  _ “I realize she spooked you terribly with her little song, but you have to realize the child can prove nothing and  _ you _ know nothing of the real danger there.” _

Indeed, it had taken Varys three years to work out how matters stood with the Lannisters’ finances and the Miners’ Guild of the Westerlands. It was an unusual situation, after all. Still, now that he  _ knew _ he had himself been hoping to procure proof, though he’d found it impossible to get a foothold with the Guild itself. They did not trust him and his little birds were soon corrupted to the Guild’s way of thinking if he sent them into the West to try and pry their way in. That was the way of it when you earned your people’s loyalty by lifting them up and then sent them somewhere that would lift them higher under their own power.

It had been the Parren girl’s efforts to find copies of Littlefinger’s books that had distracted him so. Her work to gather information around the keep was well-executed, but quite ordinary. She was a skilled little thing, but only a skilled little thing  _ for her age _ . 

He’d simply been utterly distracted when she managed to recruit the  _ Hound _ to her cause so effortlessly. Then there had been the pains he’d gone to in order to overhear her last meeting with the man the Queen so trusted to watch her deranged son. Sandor Clegane was coarse, he was unforgiving, he was callous, and as far as Varys had known the man did not possess a single friend. At least until he caught Gwyn Parren sitting opposite him on casks of ale down in a forgotten storeroom, feeding his roast chicken and outlining how she wanted him to help her track down any of Littlefinger’s whores who might have kept any hidden books.

Varys had nearly laughed for a moment. After all, the Hound would make a  _ terrible _ spy. Then, of course, the girl had gone on and revealed that she didn’t want Sandor Clegane  _ spying _ . She wanted him killing any Lannister men or Crown men who seemed to be making any progress doing the same. Varys had been pleasantly surprised to hear her utterly cold, pragmatic reasoning. 

_ “If the Martells want to know something they’re going to have half a million ready spies in anyone wearing an inoculation scar in this city. What I need is to make sure I have time to get the information, or for Prince Oberyn to do the same, and that means that Lord Arryn’s people, the King’s people, and Lord Tywin’s people either stay stupid or get dead.” _

The Hound had chuckled around a mouthful of chicken, as if the lady had said something adorable and he was a normal man in the presence of a sister or cousin of which he was fond. Then he agreed. Varys supposed he had found out who cared enough to send the man the dribs and drabs of gold that had added up to paying the maester who had done the work on Sandor’s face that had closed up the seeping sores and covered the bones a year and change before. He was just surprised that there was no hint of carnality there.  _ Fondness _ was not something he imagined the Clegane bloodline was capable of. 

_ “If two people feed a dog, the one who kicks it will get bitten first.” _ Varys reflected, then sighed.

Had he not been so busy tracking the girl’s progress, the Hound’s seven tidy little murders, or his own people’s search for proof that Lyarra Snow/Stark had started out as Visenya Targaryen he wouldn’t have missed the Queen’s decision to attempt a ridiculous mass murder against the Dornish party. As it was he was now having to clean up  _ after _ Cersei Lannister in order to assure her place just a little longer. 

Not only was Margaery Tyrell no longer an option, there was a new Dragon to consider. He needed to  _ prevent _ the King from having trueborn heirs if he was going to see some rearrangement of the throne involving the Red Viper, his Dragon bride, and their future children. Though, really, given the culture of Westeros he had to hope that Oberyn Martell had at least  _ one _ son tucked away somewhere in his loins. The last thing he needed was another Dance of Dragons, or,  _ worse _ , a foolish princess marrying some lout for love who then usurped her throne and made a wretched king.

By the time his thoughts had wound through the events of the day, how they’d come to pass and then darted down a thousand side corridors to arrange a few more deaths, a ship leaving the capitol a tad early, and the usual circuitous pathway of minor poisonings required to fake the necessary illnesses that could cause Tywin Lannister to change the servant roster he assigned his daughter for her upcoming pilgrimage he was at the door to the Hand’s solar. The vale knight guarding the door nodded at him. Varys bowed obsequiously, as was expected. Then he was allowed inside, announced, and the Game was on.

“Lord Varys, what have you discovered?” Jon Arryn wasted no time in speaking as soon as Varys was seated off to the side of both parties, opposite the small fire in the hearth.

The Queen sat in a chair next to her father. Both of the Lannisters sat opposite the Hand of the King, side by side. The Master of Laws’ face was set in its usual severe lines with no trace of any emotion present. The Queen, however, looked worried and genuinely upset as she sat with slightly red eyes from earlier tears shed in false fear and distress at what had happened to Princess Lyarra and her ladies.

Whatever else was wrong with her, and there was quite a bit to list there, Varys did have to admit that Cersei Lannister could act when she had to. If only she hadn’t been born into such a cesspit of hubris she might have made a very fine mummer. 

“Quite a bit, Lord Arryn, though I must beg your eternal forgiveness for having been so remiss in seeing the significance of the information.”

“That information  _ being _ ?” Lord Barristan Selmy sat in the chair beside Varys, his expression severe.

“I had not given it any thought that Ser Amory Lorch had a cousin amidst the castle guards, you understand, given the ponderance of Westermen in their ranks now.” Varys allowed his expression to become tragic and regretful. 

“You’re saying one of the Red Keep’s guards  _ did _ let Amory Lorch in?” Queen Cersei managed to look aghast and worried, but he knew it was her impatience that was ruling her tongue. “Lord Barristan, how did this happen?”

“As I do not have authority over the goldcloaks or your own personal guards, I do not know.” The Lord Commander’s voice was level, without accusation, and very dangerous as he replied. “I have accounted for all of the men under my control, both within the Kingsguard and those subordinate to us, and Amory Lorch has no kin amongst them.”

“Quite true.” Varys nodded. “However this guard was not part of the castle staff assigned to guard the castle or those within, but rather goods moving in and out of the Red Keep.”

Barristan Selmy’s blue eyes narrowed as did Jon Arryn’s. It was the former who spoke first.

“I believe you refer to the position of provision and supply guard created during the food shortages?”

“He does.” Jon Arryn answered the question for Varys, though he was also frowning. “No other position would fit that description. Am I correct Lord Varys?”

“Precisely correct, Lord Arryn.”

“His name?”

“Edmund Hill; he is the bastard son of Ser Amory Lorch’s father’s elder brother.”

“Were the cousins close?”

“No, however, I have sent an associate of Edmund Hills - a ox cart driver who hauls goods for a living between the docks and other parts of the city - to the more comfortable of the Red Keeps cells to await questioning from you. He reports that Edmund had recently come into an unexpected windfall of gold some weeks before when dealing with a merchant from Voltanis.”

“And the merchant?”

“Gone from the city last night, from what I can gather. Rather unexpectedly as well.”

“What could an Essosi merchant want with the death of three ladies?” Ser Barristan Selmy scowled, his expression disbelieving.

Varys cleared his throat delicately.

“I have come to understand that the man’s wife had some acquaintance with Prince Oberyn a little less than twenty-five years in the past…”

Lord Tywin’s eyes sparked while a hint of smugness touched the Queen’s face before it was quickly washed away. Not that it mattered as both Jon Arryn and Barristan had now given Varys their full attention. Lord Tywin’s green-hazel eyes were suspicious, however, instead of triumphant and Varys approved. The man did well to wonder why he was offering such a handy lie when he  _ had _ to be aware that only his daughter would have done something so foolish.

“Correct me if I am wrong, but does the Prince not have amongst his bastards a daughter four-and-twenty years old whose  _ mother _ was a noblewoman from Volatanis.”

“So I believe.” Varys allowed and tittered nervously. “I have yet to ascertain if there’s a  _ direct _ link, of course, but that may be done handily with a few simple questions. I do believe you will find proof that the name the merchant was using was false.”

They most certainly would, as he’d been sure to plant it when he killed the man. When Barristan the Bold and Jon Arryn’s people looked into it they would find that the Queen’s foolishness was now neatly disguised as an angry spouse seeking revenge against the famed prince for his licentious behavior. The Dornish, of course, would see through the lie immediately. Hopefully his little  _ gift _ for the future Queen would smooth over any annoyance that resulted therefrom. 

The rest of the meeting was unexceptional. Names, dates, and places were neatly woven from thin air and backed up by neatly arranged “facts” that were no more true than Joffrey Baratheon’s parentage. Varys’ objectives were met, however. He’d handed Queen Cersei more rope to hang herself with. He’d cinched the chains that bound Robert Baratheon to his unfortunate and miserable marriage just a bit tighter. Everything else could wait a few months while he waited to see if Oberyn Martell would defy the odds and manage to beget a son. If  _ not _ Varys was going to have to get  _ truly _ creative.

In the meantime, as always, he had work to do.

 


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has an Important Talk of some kind, Gwyn comes clean, and Ser Barristan's investigation expands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me start off the ending of this by saying THANK YOU to Madrigal_in_Training. Without you, this never would have been written. Thank you for being my partner in crime/insanity. You're an endless well of encouragement and a ball of liquid sunshine.
> 
> Next let me thank everyone who has read, offered kudos, or reviewed. You are the best and thank you for putting up with my overuse of the word "replied" (Madgrigal mostly saved you from the worst of it), my habit of repeating myself, my love of complex politics, and my habit of using 25 words to say what 10 could say better. It's been great and you're all treasures.
> 
> Finally, this is STRAIGHT off of the presses. I just finished this chapter and nobody's seen it yet. As such, it's unbetad. If anything makes sense, I've overused "replied" again (really, I do not realize how often I use that), or there's a typo - it's my fault and nobody else's!

**Chapter Thirty - 297 A.C.**

 

“What may I do for you, Lord Arryn?”

Jon Arryn knew very well that the other man did not miss the significance of _happening_ upon him only a handful of minutes after a meeting in the Hand’s Tower had broken up. They had, by all appearances, gone their separate ways with the Master of Laws walking away to see to the investigation along his lines of authority and with his resources while Ser Barristan did the same independently. Sending a servant to get Lord Tywin when Varys, the Queen, and the Lord Commander were absent sent a certain message. Making sure that meeting happened in a small, random, empty room in the Keep just made that message unmistakable.

“You do not believe anymore than I that this happened because of some old offended lover or lover’s husband of Prince Oberyn’s from Voltanis.” Jon didn’t bother bandying about words.

Lord Tywin inclined his head, but said nothing. It really wasn’t necessary that he respond, however. Jon hadn’t been asking a question; he had been making a statement.

“What arrangements have you made?”

“My daughter the Queen is going to be bereft that her rule and her marriage has fallen so far that the gods are denying her children and have made her home unsafe for her guests.” Lord Tywin replied in his usual unemotional and unequivocal tone of voice. “As a result the Queen is to take a pilgrimage to the Mother’s House on the southern shore of the God’s Eye.”

“The one in Suthton?”

“Yes.”

 _That_ surprised Lord Arryn, though Jon doubted it could make any difference in the Queen’s madness or her ill behavior. That said, this wasn’t some gently-bred, soft mother house they were talking about. This was not a place where excess noble daughters were sent to live out their lives in prayer and modest comfort. Instead the Queen would be going to one of the most harsh and radical mother houses on the continent where self-flagellation was practiced, prayers were conducted at strict intervals, and privation an expected sign of devotion among the septas who made their home there.

“I see…” Jon Arryn considered the Queen’s probable reaction and nodded.

Either Queen Cersei would come back grateful for the return to the sumptuous life to which she was accustomed or she’d come back in worse shape than ever. If the later was the case she would so clearly be mad that the only option would be to put her aside and move on. Rapidly that was becoming Jon’s favored means of handling the situation, anyway, but he had to be sure.

“If such a _devout_ mother house does not sit well with the Queen’s mind?”

“Then I will, of course, take my daughter home where she can live out her life in comfort and security.” Lord Tywin agreed, and now his expression was clearly unhappy. “In such an event the Westerlands will, of course, expect that some of the considerable support we have granted the king be returned in kind.”

House Lannister, Jon knew, had at least two daughters to its name who _might_ be suggested for the King. The only problem was their _ages_ . Both Joy Lannister - Ser Gerion Lannister’s bastard daughter had been legitimized three years before as a kindness on Robert’s part when they believed she and Lord Tywin were going to be killed by the Plague - and Kevan Lannister’s daughter were _young_. The Lady Joy was around Arya Stark’s age and Ser Kevan’s little girl was younger still; while both might have had potential for a betrothal, neither were remotely acceptable for Robert if Cersei was put aside.

If Jon could just get Robert to fix the tax collection situation, however, and curb his spending somewhat that would not be a problem. They _could_ pay the Westerlands back. Jon had done the math after Tyrion Lannister had given him his tax estimates a few days before. With care taken to be frugal and taxes gathered at the proper rate the full six million dragon debt could be discharged in three or four years. It would be a more difficult thing if they had to pay the Westerlands back directly, but they could manage that debt in installments first and then catch up to the others later. Tywin might also be placated by placing a few more Lannister relatives in castles emptied by the plague.

No matter how you chose to look at it, there was only one solution.

“Let us speak bluntly, then, Lord Tywin.” Jon sank into the plain wooden chair in the cold little room. It was all bare walls with no hearth and meant for storage. It had no windows, however, and only one door, and was one of the few places on was sure no little bird would be waiting to twitter about what was said within. “Taking into account recent developments you are in agreement that the Queen is not in her right mind and that Prince Joffrey shall be another Aerys if he takes the throne?”

“Yes.” The other man allowed, his tone low and a hint of real anger in it.

“If the Queen does not fall pregnant shortly after she returns from her pilgrimage - let us give her a year -  or she displays more signs of mental unrest do you agree that the Queen will be removed to Casterly Rock and the King will press for an annulment?”

“With the understanding that all debts to my House shall be repaid, and that in the next generation there will be an agreement for a daughter of House Lannister to marry issue from the King’s next marriage I _reluctantly_ agree to this, Lord Arryn. _If_ it becomes absolutely necessary and I agree _in person_ to these measures when the Queen has returned to the capital after her journey and been given a year to prove herself fertile.”

“The crown understands and accepts your reluctance and your terms.” Jon went on, nodding out his agreement with all that was said. “The Crown Prince shall, for now, be sent into House Lannister’s care at Casterly Rock.”

“My brother, Ser Kevan, shall take Prince Joffrey as his squire and report directly on his behavior.” Lord Tywin agreed, his lips twisting in disgust. “I took precise notes during my time as Hand on the progression of King Aerys’ madness with the understanding between myself and Queen Rhaella and myself that when he was ousted and his son succeeded him measures would be put in place in the future to remove monarchs, or exclude heirs, who showed signs of encroaching madness. I will present this information to the crown along with the evidence of Joffrey’s behavior and he will be remanded to the Night Watch.”

“Agreed.” Jon Arryn took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face. “Lord Tywin, I’m too old a man to waste any more time. Allow me to be entirely honest with you.”

“Of course.” The man replied stiffly, obviously anticipating some other comment about his House or his daughter.

“I spoke to Lord Stark ere he and the King left and persuaded that he give me his word that he would not allow the King to appoint him as Hand after my death.”

Tywin never showed enough emotion or lost control enough to look shocked, but he did deliberately raise his eyebrows to show this wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. Jon gave him a thin smile. Then the Lord of the Eyrie spread both his hands out to show they were empty of tricks, as was he.

“Ned’s too honest a man for this place. It takes a vein of practicality and flexibility he does not have to be Hand, and I love him too well to see him suffer.” Jon sighed. “I feel well, I have no plans nor signs to suggest I will die soon, but I am going to leave shortly for the Vale to put my House’s succession in order. That carries with it a certain danger. I need to be assured that there will be someone who can manage the realm to take my place. Given what Robert owes to your family and your experiences in handling Aerys, would you consent to be appointed Hand when I’ve vacated this world for whatever heaven or hell I’ve earned a place in?”

“I have always stood with order in the Kingdom.” Tywin’s reply held a very real and level sort of respect as he looked at Jon. “You surprise me, Lord Arryn.”

“For the last ten years of Robert’s reign you’ve held the majority of the financial stability of the realm in your hands. Discounting that would be unjust.”

“Yet it would seem expedient to those who consider themselves my enemies.”

“Those who consider themselves _your_ enemies would see Robert dead in an instant.” Jon replied, his tone harsh and tired. “Am I wrong to assume you would prefer to see Robert and his line remain on the throne, stable, than another rebellion and the upheaval that would follow with no known line or claim to this throne present?”

“No, you’re not wrong.”

Jon nodded, for there was little else to say to that. Lord Tywin had something to add, however.

“You will see that the King’s anger over the assassination attempt on the ladies of the Martell party shall not escape his self-control and result in an assault on my daughter or any form of _direct_ punishment grandson.”

Jon pressed his lips together, but nodded.

“It has never been hard to persuade the King to avoid his wife. If you will see that she is readying herself for her journey I will let Robert know she is leaving and best avoided. Joffrey will be more difficult. He will wish to seek his father out after he returns from battle, and I assure you that they are making haste here as we speak. Lord Stark, at the least, will come here as if all the devils of every one of the seven hells are at his feet. He does not have good experiences in leaving his family in this place.”

“I shall take the Prince in hand, but Lord Stark shall be yours to manage.”

“Agreed.” Jon rose. “I had been be ready for when they arrive, then.”

Lord Tywin inclined his head and the two old men parted ways with the present and future divided neatly between them. Like most neat solutions, it wasn’t going to work.

 

* * *

 

Lord Varys reflected that, for once, Lord Tywin Lannister need not worry that his short-term goals were in any way anathema to his own. Varys’ long term goals were something else, of course, but for the short term his and Lord Tywin’s goals _mostly_ lined up. There was only one small deviation therefrom.

As such Varys was a little winded as he made his way swiftly down to the stable courtyard. It had taken a handy bit of work to accomplish all of the things he needed to. First, he needed to arrange a rather _precise_ set of distractions to make sure certain persons did not arrive in the stable yard until he was quite ready. Secondly, he had to make sure that a large number of witnesses who were _not_ part of the group to be delayed _were_ present. Those were were delayed had to arrived in the proper order and at the proper moment as well, and at least one of those was under heavy guard and shouldn’t have been able to sneak down at all. _That_ one was the real tricky one.

As he came to a lightly sweating stop at the edge of the yard Varys nopped daintily at the bald dome of his head and over his brow for all of those present to see. It was important to project the correct image, after all. Once that was accomplished he needs must wait for the most important players in this little drama so central to his amended plans for the Game. Thankfully he did not have to wait long.

Lord Eddard Stark and several Northerners rode through King’s Landing like a clattering wind. The direwolf banner drew eyes forward, but it was the copper armor of the man leading them that drew the smallfolk’s attention. A Martell guard was a symbol of their latest idols, after all, and all such drew their eyes instantly. Varys would make use of that, later, when he slipped into a favored disguise as a fisherman and bobbed and weaved amongst the other drunks at the dockside taverns, swapping tales and “news” with others of that sort.

Eddard Stark was quite a sight. His great black warhorse was lathered, but still powerful. Restive from the stress of the run and the anger radiating off of is rider, the stallion pranced about and made the lives of the stable lads who took his reins difficult. They twisted and turned, leading the horse off along with several others as the other Northmen leaped off their own mounts.

“Walk them all for an hour, not one minute less, and give them only warm water! Have Jonas mix the poultice for their legs himself - no other - and slathered it on thick when they’re in their stalls. No food until sunset at the _earliest!”_ Ser Domeric Bolton yelled after the grooms in a voice that threatened dire consequences if attention were not paid precisely to his instructions as he jogged forward and took up his position flanking his lord’s left shoulder.

“My Lord Stark, how good of you to race bac-.” Varys begun, fully expecting to be interrupted as he stepped forward with a bow and effectively blocked the other man’s exit from the yard.

He’d made sure several members of the court were scattered about. Two women in riding gowns who were terrible gossips would be assured everyone heard what was said repeatedly. Several lords from different factions meant that the politics of every word would be analyzed. Finally, a couple of squires meant that the tall tales would start, and those two were of great use.

Lord Stark certainly looked like a proper Warden of the North. His dark hair was lank with sweat and windblown and wild. The few strands of gray stood out dramatically under the bright sun. Streaks of dried blood covered his face and armor, and his boots and breeches were stained with lather from his horse.

Then there was his armor. He was the mail and boiled leather of the North, but no helm. He had a dagger at his belt and another tucked in one of his boots. His stained surcoat was fine, however, clearly a mark of a Lord and his carriage was like one of the King’s of Winter come again; noble, powerful, and uncompromising. Meanwhile his gray eyes seethed like hot ash and across his back a great threat in Valyrian Steel was sheathed.

 _“Yes,”_ Varys thougth happily, _“I couldn’t have asked him to look more like a Stark if I wanted. Cregan come again. Lovely.”_

“Not, _now_ , Varys.” Stark barked at him as his eyes darted around the stable yard. “Where are my daughters? Have you news of the Princess Lyarra?”

“As of a little over a quarter hour the Princess was quite well.”

“And her babe?”

“Undisturbed by being carried away on such a distressing adventure, or so I am told.” Varys added. “The Lady Arya is, of course, also closeted with the Prince’s party and the whole of your own household and the Princes’ are under the heaviest of guard.”

“With this whole blasted place unsafe to even those under guest right, do _you_ believe that unwise, Varys?” Stark demanded, his tone harsh.

“I am ever in favor of caution and prudence, my Lord Stark, wherever I should find it.”

The Warden of the North’s scowl could have been turned into some terrible icy sickle, Varys was sure, and it would have cut through the stone of the keep itself. That is, if legends were real. Unfortunately they were not any more real than most people found such things as justice and good living. Pity.

“Ned!”

The King arrived, his own horse a trembling wreck. The destrier stumbled its way to the block, shivering in the heat of the day and covered in a thick lather. Foam bubbled out of its mouth all around the bloody bit. Varys spared a moment’s pity for the animal; if it lived through the night the expensive beast would likely be ruined and forever unsound after what it had been put through. A heavy cart horse couldn’t have comfortably sat the king in full armor at a gallop; at least not at Robert Baratheon’s current weight.

Two members of the Kingsguard rode into the stableyard just behind their King. Looking at the rotting vegetables and other refuse that had left stains on their white cloaks and armor Varys was amused to note why. It appeared they’d closed ranks behind the King to protect his back as he rode. The results were malodorous. Ser Jaime looked particularly offended at the smears of unmentionable substances that were now tangled into the back of his golden hair.

“Damnation and a pox on this beast!”

King Robert was panting on his own, sweat running in rivers down his face, through his beard, and into his armor. He swung off his horse in a clatter and clang of plate. He did not move freely after the discomfort of the exertion of battle and then such a hasty ride on top of it. His weight told against him here, for while it had cost him nothing of his strength it did cost him a great measure of his vitality. The difference between the clean muscle of Lord Stark and the King’s condition was obvious; there was only a year between their ages.

“Ned, what do you know?” King Robert demanded, then caught sight of Varys. “Spider! What the fuck is happening? I go out to battle and everything turns to shit behind me in my _own castle?_ Well, spit it out!”

The King was eloquent as ever.

“I’m afraid that in your absence the Dornish party was attacked most grievously, Your Grace.”

“I know that!”

“Your Grace,” Ned Stark’s face was set in granite hard lines, and his eyes were a mix of fierce anger, fear, and pain. “I’ll take my leave now. I wish to check on my daughters and my party-.”

“I’ll come with you-.”

Precisely on time Lord Commander Barristan Selmy walked into the yard, a hint of red on his cheeks and his blue eyes snapping with vexation.

“Forgive my delay, Your Grace, Lord Stark, my squire was set to watch the gate but gave more of his attention to a pretty serving maid. He has been punished.”

“The Lord Commander is handling the investigation into the attack from within the keep while the Master of Laws pursues outside sources.” Varys provided helpfully and watched a pitched battle go on in Ned Stark’s eyes as his fatherly need to see to his children fought with and finally admitted defeat to the man’s tireless sense of duty.

“Lord Commander, how did this _happen_ while my kin were under guest right?”

The demand was as cold and sharp as a wind off of the sea north of Braavos, Varys noted. It was also completely uncompromising and utterly furious. He watched as his carefully selected vectors of information dissemination hung on every word around the stable yard. They’d all knelt for the King’s arrival, he’d waved them off without even looking. Now, with Ned Stark making demands, the King lurched even further forward.

“Your King would know this too, Lord Commander.”

Barristan the Bold didn’t hesitate; he spoke immediately and succinctly.

“By all appearances Amory Lorch gathered a number of men of his acquaintance together. Most of them were men of the Westerlands. Two others were from Essos. Using a cousin who was amongst the guards in charge of moving food into and out of the Red Keep during the famine as a vector, they were let inside the Red Keep during the dark hours of the morning.”

“After which, the man attempted to murder my _family_ .” Ned Stark’s words came out as a growl and he turned to the King. “Robert, I told you. I told you nigh on _sixteen years ago_ when stood not a hundred yards from this spot that if you did not punish a man for butchering a three-year-old girl he would go on to butcher others, did I not? _Your Grace_ , did I not say it?”

King Robert, Varys noted, looked stricken and embarrassed as the anger on his face morphed into another expression. Varys expected it to be blustering anger. The King did not expect and did not like to be challenged. Instead the man surprised Varys by looking _contrite_.

“You’re not wrong, Ned.” The King allowed, but looked back at Selmy instead of saying anything else. “How the fuck was it missed when we were searching for Lorch that he had a _cousin_ with free access to the Red Keep?”

“The man was a bastard, and there are six different Hills working within the Keep. None are free with their origins, and it was only when I personally pressed for answers that the other servants revealed the information to me.”

“Why the hell go after the Princess?” Now Robert Baratheon’s expression was pained. “You are sure she’s well, dammit?”

“Yes, by all accounts, Princess Lyarra is shaken but not injured.” Barristan the Bold answered and Ned Stark shook his head.

“Not injured does not mean _well_. My daughter should not have to fight for her life or the lives of her ladies under any circumstances! She was under your roof!” Ned Stark protested.

“I know that, Ned!” The King glared now, his temper riling and preparing to spill out in all directions. “In case you’ve forgotten _I am King_. Have a care.”

“And yet two hours ago you called me brother _first_ , Your Grace. However, as I see the title you prefer I grant it to you glady and with all the respect of your rank.”

Varys could have asked for _nothing_ better than the brief flare of hurt in Stark’s eyes, or how it turned to anger. Nor would he have imagined any remonstrance more effective than the respectful, brief bow that Ned Stark offered Robert Baratheon. _That_ moment, where he called the King brother with one breath and accused him of not acting like one with another was a more effective weapon against the King’s heart than any saber or bolt. One made more deadly by yet another moment of perfect timing.

“Lord Stark!”

Ser Tremond Gargalen, aging Lord of Salt Shore chose that moment to walk into the conversation. He inclined his head and shoulders politely to the King as well. He was leaning heavily on his cane and clearly struggling to walk swiftly without grimacing in pain.

“Your Majesty.”

“What ails you?” The King barked in surprise, his expression turning thunderous as it fixed on the Salty Dornishman.

No doubt he saw the Dornish as encapsulating all of his problems and griefs at that moment. Without them surely Ned Stark would not be angry at the King. Without them he would be free to lust after Lyanna Stark’s image. Without them this, that, or the other of the griefs planted by his faults and sown by his actions would not have come to fruition. The man was a master at self-denial and fictitious blame. Franky, had he been able to deceive anyone but himself, Varys would have been impressed by King Robert’s talents.

“A maid in her cleaning left water and soap upon the stairs. I took a fall on my way to meet your party, Your Majesty.”

“Were you injured, Lord Gargalen?”

“I’ve my share of bruises and the bones in my knee met none to gently, but I’m no more crippled nor old than I was before I fell, Lord Stark. I came to say that my nephew greatly wishes speech with you, and your daughters would have your presence directly.”

The old man brushed off the fall grimly and Varys took a moment to note he’d have to have a very stern note with that little bird. He’d said leave the _hall_ floor slippery; the stairs were much too dangerous for a man of Lord Gargalen’s age to fall on unless you wished to risk very _specific_ injuries. That was _not_ part of the plan.

“They have it.” Ned replied and turned, bowing again. “By your leave, Your Grace?”

“Aye, Ned.” Robert Baratheon turned to him, his face turning stern and furious under its sheen of sweat. “I’ll get to the bot-.”

“ _Father_!”

 _Precisely_ on time, Varys noted with great pleasure, Joffrey Baratheon appeared at a run. It had been no small feat to arrange his escape from his jailers. He’d had to give up a secret passage, albeit one that connected to no others, to do it. It was a sacrifice he hated to make, but he wanted to make _sure_ he got Joffrey Baratheon out of King’s Landing before the rumors of the assassination attempt against the Martells got out too far amongst the smallfolk. He needed the waste of air _alive_ until such a time as the king was dead. He wanted gridlock, not to see the logjam broken apart.

“Joffrey? What in Seven Hells are you doing down here? Isn’t this when you take lessons with Pycelle?”

Varys was frankly shocked. Not only was the King apparently aware of the Princes’ schedule, but he was correct. Maybe he _had_ underestimated the man’s interest in securing or improving his heir.

“No, father, the Grand Maester dismissed lessons so he could assist grandfather in something.” Joffrey grinned. “Tell me of the battle, please! Did you kill many enemies? Was it bloody?”

“Not _now_ , Joffrey.” The King’s frustration was evident, but there was just the barest hint he was pleased to be asked such a question. “Ask your uncle of the battle. You shouldn’t be out of your quarters, either. There’s been an attack within the castle and you are my only heir; you should be under guard with your mother.”

“What does that matter? It wasn’t an attack on _us_ , just some angry knight with no land trying to kill that Dornish snake through his little bastard bride? Wasn’t some Volatine nobody that the prince screwed, or screwed his wife, or _something_ behind it, Varys?”

It was almost charming, Vary reflected, how very _stupid_ Joffrey was. Not only was he arrogant, but he was largely _oblivious_ to the world outside the tiny sphere of his interests and those few people who would kiss his ass and lift him up. Self-aggrandisement existed in many forms and fed many egos, but he’d never quite met one so perfectly blinded by it as the Prince. It really was a pure sort of madness, to simply be immune to the idea that there _was_ such a thing as humanity outside of himself.

“Reports _do_ indicate that Ser Amory did have a great deal of contact with a Volantine merchant whose wife’s name was linked with Prince Oberyn in the past.”

The King’s face darkened. The sweat on his reddened brow should have been _sizzling_ in pent up outrage. Ser Barristan had gone delightfully blank as he stood to the King’s left. For his part, Ser Jaime managed to merely look exasperated and annoyed at his unacknowledged son’s stupidity. Lord Stark’s reaction, however, could not have been better had Varys written it himself. The eunuch would almost miss Joffrey the day the little toad died; he could always be counted on to act in a predictable manner. Assuming you knew what he wanted in that moment, at least.

“I would sooner believe wights stalk beyond the Wall and the snarks and grumpkins of my children’s tales are true than believe that tale.” Lord Stark snarled and turned to the Lord Commander. “Ser Barristan,  you said that that Amory Lorch’s party was composed mostly of men from _where?_ ”

“The Westerlands.” The venerable knight answered simply, but there was a flash of satisfaction in his blue eyes as he spoke. “Save for two men from Essos.”

“Were these the same two that made an attempt on the King’s life with an unblunted dagger, and who struck Lord Renly in the back?”

“Yes.”

Lord Stark turned his eyes, nearly black in their fury, on the King. Robert Baratheon’s expression was grim as he looked back.

“Go see to your girls, Ned. I _Promise_ I will handle this.”

“But, Father, won’t you-.” Joffrey started again.

“Joffrey!” Now the King rounded on him fully. “What of your preparations to leave? You were to leave for your squireship and leave immediately after the tourney, boy, have you not packed _yet_?”

“I can squire here, father, with _you_ ! Or _you_ could knight me. The King may knight anyone he pleases, and why should a prince serve another and clean his armor and that rubbish?” The Crown Prince began. “I shouldn’t have to go anywhere, I’m going to be _King_!”

Robert Baratheon, who was a bad king but had tried once very had to be a good and proper knight, found that a bridge too far. His face going from red to white with anger one big, meaty hand shot out. A moment later he had seized his wife’s bastard by the scruff of the neck nad propelled him stumbling into Ser Jaime’s chest.

“I’ve had enough. Kingslayer!” The King spat. “Your king commands you to _personally_ see your nephew back to his quarters. There you are to pack clothes, weapons, and whatever else he needs - not _wants,_ but _needs_ \- for his journey to Casterly Rock. He may take no more with him than he can carry in his saddlebags and a _single_ pack mule, just as _I_ did when I was sent to the Eyrie. You are to _personally_ lead the party of guards your father chooses for the task in taking him west and you’re to do it as soon as you are packed and provisioned. Don’t take a gods-be-damned break to _piss_ , am I clear?”

Joffrey appeared to be struck silent at even the thought.

“Yes, Your Grace.” The infamous knight bowed, gripped his nephew-son by the shoulders and began to walk the shocked boy away swiftly. “Varys, come with me and do your damned job. We’re getting to the bottom of this.”

Fully aware that no-one would be obscuring the bottom as well as he was, not even Lord Tywin, Varys bowed, tucked his hands into his sleeves, and followed. With Lord Gargalen leading Stark away and the knowledge that all of the proper wheels had been greased to get the Dornish party and its hidden Dragon south as soon as could be arranged Varys felt he could be pleased with a good day’s work.

 

* * *

 

Splitting up from Sandor Clegane in the basement, Arya Stark had only one problem. _Time_. Well, she stared out with one problem. Another one stubbornly followed her. Still, time was by far her biggest problem.

It had taken too long to get into the city. Then it had taken longer yet to work their way down into the worst part of Fleabottom. At least with Sandor with her everyone gave her a very wide berth. The man was crude and he was mean, but he was pretty useful. Arya to a certain pleasure in the idea of how he’d have horrified her sister, should Sansa had met him. He wasn’t _anything_ like you’d have heard about in a song or a story. Even the villains were usually prettier than Sandor, and if they weren’t, they were more ambitious.

Still, no matter how much time she lacked, Arya had to do certain things. She had to get rid of her dirty, filthy, boy’s clothes. She’d acquired the ragged tunic, pants, and other things from Syrio and was sad to let them go, but they were helplessly stained and filthy from the stinking sewers they’d had to work their way out of to get into the City.

Going hand in hand with that was getting to the place where she’d left her dress and smallclothes and other things. Thankfully they hadn’t been stolen. Instead hey still sat waiting by the forgotten part of a half-collapsed old tunnel where the floor had sunken. Clear water gathered there, dripping from overhead, and Arya jumped into it. Even in the cool of the basement it was much warmer than Winterfell’s moat. There Arya grabbed the soap shaving she’d left with her clothes and bathed as quickly as possible. Drying off with handfuls of rope fuzz she’d peeled and sawed away from ropes coiled and left in another storeroom, she sniffed herself.

She didn’t smell great, but she didn’t smell worse than normal after running about all day. She’d spent her morning with Syrio. The stink would be passed off as normal sweaty little girl stink, she decided. At worst they’d think she’d been letting Nymeria sleep in her bed and hadn’t been wiping her down regularly. Since Nymeria hated baths and Arya _hadn’t_ it wouldn’t even be quite a lie, if you looked at it right. Walda would probably throw her in a bath and perfume her, though, and Prince Oberyn would help. He could be as fussy as Sansa sometimes.

Shrugging back into her ‘lady’ clothes, as she thought of them, Arya sprinted through the deserted parts of the castle. She had to dodge servants, as it was now rather later than she’d started out. She had to take the long way back. By the time she’d gotten to her father’s still abandoned guest solar she was definitely worried. If Prince Oberyn caught her, would he send her away with her father? Would she have to go back to Winterfell?

If she did she knew her mother would never let her have another sword lesson. Just the thought froze Arya’s heart. Worse, though, she was afraid she’d have shamed her father. Arya didn’t want to do that, ever.

“Mrow?”

“Shhh!” Arya hissed at her second problem.

The black cat had left them after leading them most of the way down to the sewers. He’d just vanished, as was the scarred feline’s want. As soon as she’d gotten back past the dragon skulls, however, Arya had acquired a stalker that would not quit.

“I’m going to have Nymeria eat you!” Arya threatened again.

The cat’s response was to leap up onto the window sill, the move dainty and graceful for such a large, rangy, beast. Then, to her shock, he scurried outside along its edge and jumped again to land on the open window of Gwyn’s sickroom. Arya gaped and then scrambled to follow. It was still scary to look so far down, and to have to make sure nobody was looking _up_ , but speed was her ally. She got back in the room.

To her surprise, there was no-one waiting for her with a grim expression. Well, nobody but Gwyn. Those blue eyes were looking up at her, avid with worry.

“Well?” Gwyn whispered and Arya watched as Gwyn began to push and pull at the blankets around her.

Arya saw with surprise that Gwyn and twisted two of the extra pillows down, folding the other two over so it looked like she was still propped up on four even though she wasn’t. Then she’d taken the other two and tucked them alongside of her. It looked, Arya realized, like someone was hiding under a mound of covers. A brown braid was even sticking out of the top of it.

“We did it!” Arya related eagerly, sliding down to sit on the bed next to her.

The black tomcat, meanwhile, circled the room. He stropped his head on all of the furniture. He turned around once or twice to sniff things. Then he leapt up on the bed and curled up into a ball on the foot of it as if he owned the place. Gwyn looked down at him in surprise.

“You’ve got a cat?”

“No.”

“Then…?”

The door opened at that to reveal a worried looking Prince Oberyn. Arya was very glad she’d changed. She was very happy Gwyn had just been fiddling with the covers and the pillows. It looked like she’d just crawled out of them. That would also explain why she was sweaty; it was too hot for blankets!

“Lady Gwyn, I must needs see your wounds.” The Prince stepped forward, only sparing a short glance at Arya. “Go attend your sister, Arya.”

Gwyn looked pained and worried and Arya didn’t know whether it was her wound or the fact that Arya couldn’t report on what happened now. Either way, she turned to go as Nymeria nudged her way in. For a minute Arya was afraid things might get rather _hairy_ as her direwolf locked eyes with the cat. Instead, to her shock, Nymeria stretched her nose out, sniffling peacefully at the smaller creature. Likewise, the one-eyed beast stretched a paw out and patted at the wolf’s nose once, as if in mutual acknowledgement and the Prince surprised _all_ of them by asking in a strangled voice:

“And what is this?”

 

* * *

 

Lyarra nervously moved into the door of Gwyn’s sickroom. Even if all she did was hold Gwyn’s hand she wanted to be with her. Oberyn didn’t want her to. He’d tried to coax her into laying down again, but she couldn’t. There was too much going on, and having to remain still and quiet was driving her to distraction. She wasn’t even allowed to help pack.

“Oberyn?”

“Wherever did you find him?” Oberyn was staring down at the big cat perched on the corner of Gwyn’s bed in shock, falling to his knees. “It _cannot_ be!”

“Everything’s gone strange.” Arya looked up at her in complaint and Lyarra wanted nothing more than to agree.

The great beast of a cat, however, was not growling. It looked mean and ragged to Lyarra’s eyes. It didn’t precisely look like anyone’s _pet_ with its missing eye and damaged ear and the great white scar across its back. Despite this, it purred as if a tiny kitten and allowed Oberyn to gather it up into his arms as gently as if it had known him forever. It even began bumping its head against his chin as Oberyn rather distractedly traced a little white zigzag mark on its chest with one thumb.

“I believe I am going mad.” Oberyn observed distractedly, sitting down. “Arron, get in here!”

Ser Arron immediately appeared. His jaw dropped open. He tilted his head to stare with his one good eye, then he squinted it.

“That is not possible.” The Knight immediately denied.

“I _know_.”

“There has to be another cat…”

“There’s gray in his fur. He’s old enough.”

That much, Lyarra realized, was true. Though his coat was pitch black there were little white strands ticked around his muzzle. It wasn’t a young cat at all.

“Oberyn?” Lyarra tried again, stepping inside and jerking her head at Arya to get Nymeria out. Her sister obligingly did so. “Oberyn, is that your cat?”

“It’s Rhaenys’.” He offered, his voice low and choked. “Right before Harrenhal I brought her a little kitten I had found. It was born to the ship’s cat on our journey from Sunspear. Rhaegar had said he wished to get her a puppy. Elia said I brought him just to be difficult…”

“The little princess named him Balerion.” Ser Arron offered, and there were tears standing in his single eye as he leaned forward and very carefully touched the white scar on his back, then the cat’s face, and then slowly touched his own. “It seemed we fared about the same in the Rebellion.”

Oberyn said nothing, just sat there. Lyarra decided she needed to do something. Gwyn was just laying back against her pillows, as if every last bit of energy was drained from her body and all that was left was limp relief.

“Should he be in Gwyn’s sickroom?”

“What?” Oberyn blinked, then shook his head. “No. You are correct. Neither should the wolves. Here, Arron… find a basket, yes?”

“And a pan and several large baskets of sand to last the journey.” The Knight agreed. “Don’t worry for it. My girls got cats too. Come on, Black Dread, there’ll be many a fine dark eyed little girl to cuddle you again, where we’re going…”

The cat went quietly now, and as Lyarra caught its single eye as it was taken out she would have sworn it looked _smug_ somehow. She was too tired and confused to look into it further, however. She would get her husband alone at some point, and in the comfort and quiet of whatever would serve as their quarters on the ship they could talk. There was a great deal to speak of.

“Gwyn, do you want Lyarra to be here?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then.” Oberyn cleared his throat and went on almost briskly as he went over to a basin, poured water in it, and then picked up a bar of saop. “Lyarra, watch how I wash my hands. You must make sure you get the folds of your knuckles and underneath your nails. We do not know why cleanliness stops infection, but the Maesters hold that it does and I’ve seen nothing to disprove this…”

The next few minutes were spent scrubbing hands. Then Lyarra stood beside her husband while he peeled the covers Gwyn had up carefully. In deference to her modesty he folded them back at an angle, so they hid most of her body, and then shoved her shift up to her hip so only her injured leg was exposed.

Lyarra felt something inside her hurt when she took in the blood stained bandage. It had a kind of greenish tint to it. Oberyn explained that was a potion bandages were sometimes soaked in to encourage healing and keep them from sticking to a wound.

Carefully peeling the bandage away fro Gwyn’s leg revealed a short, deep stab wound secured by six closely packed black silk stitches. The entire area around it was bruised and slightly swollen from the injury. Gwyn’s leg was clean now. Only an angry red line gone rusty in spots remained, held together by the silk. She’d been a bloody mess when Oberyn had carried her away from the gallery, however. Some of it had even been her own rather than the result of what she’d done to Lorch’s face after the man had fallen and Walda and Ghost had left him helpless before Gwyn’s panicked wrath.

“Does it look well?”

“It’s impossible to tell only a few hours away. It is not much inflamed, that is a good sign.” Oberyn told Lyarra and Gwyn just watched, silent and tired looking.

His maester’s casket sat on a side table. He went over and, quietly explaining when Lyarra asked, mixed a number of powders and a few wrinkly preserved roots in the bottom of a marble mortal. The matching pestal was quickly put to use grinding it all up. Vinegar was added to it from a small, corked bottle. Then it was all mashed together into a gray paste that Oberyn smeared over the wound before wrapping it again in linen, this time without the green tinge.

“Gwyn, are you alright?”

Gwyn nodded.

“Do you want to talk.”

Gwyn’s blue eyes, that had drifted closed, opened again. She seemed to be considering something. Finally she shook her head.

“I have a lot to say, but not now.”

The earnest response relaxed Lyarra slightly, and left her nervous. There was a heaviness in the air. A _thoughtfulness_ that hovered around Gwyn that wasn’t quite normal. Her nervous friend seemed almost at peace, and Lyarra felt that jarring her in a way she didn’t like. Gwyn had been stabbed by a swordsman who murdered children. She’d seemed like she’d gone mad when she’d bashed his face in repeatedly, chopping away at Amory Lorch’s features with a cleaver when he was already too injured to have escaped, or even likely lived long. This calm after the storm was unnerving.

“Then you should rest.” Lyarra decided there was nothing else to do or say and washed her hands again, left with Oberyn, and allowed him to guide her back to a seat.

“You feel entirely well?” He inquired and Lyarra cut him off before he could start again.

“I’m had no belly cramps or pains, nor any in my back.” Lyarra replied and held up her hand and twisted it. “My wrist is sore, from where I had to hold my sword against his blows. That is the closest I came to harm, Oberyn. The babe’s fine.”

Lyarra was a little afraid for the child she carried as well. That said, she didn’t want to say so. Instead she found herself stifling an urge to say something about her fear for their _son_ . Oberyn would only stare at her, and things had gotten strange enough. A mystery cat supposedly creeping out of the past of the very dead princess they’d just avenged was odd enough, as was Arya’s choice to nap peacefully with Gwyn for three hours rather than get into mischief. Frankly, Lyarra _suspected_ that, especially with Nymeria having slept outside the door as a kind of guard. She wasn’t quite to question it, however, when it was obvious that there was no way that her sister could sneak out of the room. She wasn’t going to open the window and _fly_ after all and there was no other door.

“The Lord Eddard Stark!” Ser Damien’s voice announced from the door and Lyarra rose automatically as Oberyn did the same beside her.

A moment later and Lyarra suddenly felt her world was almost right again. For just a second, she could pretend she wasn’t a princess. She could forget she was a _lady_ in the eyes of others now. She could vanish beneath skin she’d never really wanted to inhabit, and be no more than the Bastard of Winterfell and her father’s daughter as Eddard Stark wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, safe from the world.

“Thank all of our ancestors’ Gods you’re safe.” Her father rumbled against her curls and then a warm, small, wiry person was wriggling into the embrace against her side and Lyarra wrapped her arm around Arya as Arya joined them and their father shifted to accommodate them both. “Arya, where were you when all of this happened?”

“I had left for my dancing lessons early.”

“Yes, Syrio Forel is a hard taskmaster.” Oberyn’s wry voice broke the moment.

Lyarra was once again a princess, a title she still wasn’t comfortable with, and a wife and mother to be. Both were odd things to think of herself as, but at least the third was comfortable from use and the knowledge that her husband was a decent man. A man she was still somewhat angry with, but overall she had to love him. The Gods had not been unkind to her.

“I would perhaps be more inclined to humor had I not returned from battle to find another had happened behind my back.” Lyarra winced at the sharpness of her father’s tone and pulled back.

“Father, we’re alive, Gwyn is pale and wan and it’s awful but - Gods willing - she’ll be fine. Let’s not fight, I’ve had enough of it.” Lyarra plead and watched as her father seemed to go through some internal struggle before he turned to face Oberyn; for once her husband’s expression was every inch as grim as her father’s.

“I was a fool, but acquit me of being truly stupid or uncaring. I left the guards nearly tripled and every precaution in place against an _intelligent_ threat.” The Red Viper’s lips twisted up, fangs flashing in his every word. “I had not anticipated such _stupidity_ in one of Tywin Lannister’s children. The man is putrid, but I will not pretend he is not intelligent.”

“You think it was the Queen?”

“It had to be _one_ of that family, and the Imp has no motivation nor has the Old Lion. The Kingslayer was not here and does his own murdering besides. That leaves the Queen or her unnatural offspring, yes?”

“It was the Queen.” Lyarra stated flatly into the middle of their conversation.

Oberyn raised his eyebrows and gestured for her to continue, but only after he shot her father a look and Lyarra found herself reluctantly relinquished from her father’s care to Oberyn’s. She ended up sitting at the settee she favored again, this time pressed against her husband’s side with one of his arms wrapped around her shoulders. She leaned into the touch and idly rested a hand over her belly. For all her dreams of a little boy, barely toddling through his first steps, over the sands of a strange beach Lyarra felt it was just so _fragile_ . Still, she was growing more certain by the day it wasn’t wistful thinking guiding her. If she wasn’t ready to _think_ about seeing through Ghost’s eyes, she knew she’d done it. Why not believe her dreams as well?

Lyarra felt a moment’s grief that she had no time to write Robb. She’d been so twisted up by everything she’d forgot earlier. Now her eyes strayed out the window to where the sun sat and she knew it had passed the time for such things.

“Why do you think that, Lyarra?” Her father asked, his tone requesting details and understanding and not expressing disbelief. He took a moment to frown as he settled Arya on his knee, as if wishing to send her away but loath to part with her. “Arya…”

“Have her stay; she’s already heard and seen much.” Oberyn shook his head. “And while Sunspear is a _safe_ court, Lord Stark, it is a _court_. Your daughter will be learning politics amongst all of her other lessons. Let her learn now the value of a secret and show her love for her kin by keeping them.”

“As you would.” Lyarra’s father agreed stiffly and gestured to Lyarra, who let out a deep breath.

“I’ve thought on it since it happened.” Lyarra went on, knowing she was about to trigger some serious shock. “I do not believe that-.”

“Lord Gargalen of Salt Shore!”

“Bloody hells, I know where my Uncle’s from!” Oberyn, clearly irritated called out as the door opened. “Uncle?”

“The baggage is stowed and the tide will begin to move out in two hours time.” Lord Gargalen minced no words as he limped in and Lyarra rose from her seat without thought as she saw the way he was hobbling.

“Uncle, are you well?” The words slipped out her mouth, the title she’d only ever before given Benjen Stark falling on the Lord’s venerable gray head.

He was obviously pleased. Lord Gargalen beamed at her as he lowered himself roughly into a chair. He also gestured for her to sit down and Lyarra huffed as her husband gently nudged and pulled her back into place.

“You leave tonight.”

Ned Stark’s flat, unhappy statement expanded to fill the room and Oberyn turned to meet his eyes, black and gray flashing at each other.

“You cannot imagine I shall have a single one of my people remain after what has happened.”

“No.” Lord Stark shook his head and pulled a face, breathing out and looking down into Arya’s face before looking up at Lyarra; his eyes were filled with grief. “Parting is no easy task for a father who loves his children.”  
“I’ve been absent from my own for more than half a year now, Lord Stark, I understand well.” Oberyn agreed grimly. “But I would see Lyarra out of this place while I may still welcome my ninth daughter into the world.”

Lyarra would later blame it on the grimness. Everything was horrible. The castle was a great seething ball of tension. She, in that moment, had realized with a sudden heart-crushing helplessness that this might be the last time she saw her father. He’d promised to tell her of her mother… but he could do that by raven if he so decided.

“It’s going to be a boy.” Lyarra blurted out.

 

* * *

 

“Pack everything.” Ned Stark ordered firmly and passed the man standing beside him a list. “As quickly as you may and for sea travel. These are those of our party who will go back overland and escort the bulk of the horses and the wheelhouse North. My horse and Ser Domeric’s two mounts, Ash, and Lady Gwyn’s rouncey will come North with us on the ship to White Harbor.”

“Aye, my Lord.” Jory Cassel agreed, then paused. “Ash?”

Ned winced.

“Before I got my daughter a fine Northern mount for her parting gift I should have asked myself how it would fare in the heat and on short commons when it comes to water, if need be. Lyarra is gifting Ash to Bran, so that my son may have a proper and fierce mount to ride on as he learns the ways of knighthood. It’ll be some years before he’s earned a stallion suited for battle and Ash is a warhorse and Ryswell bred. Patches is being gifted to my stable for much the same reason.”

Jory nodded in understanding and turned, bowing slightly before racing off to accomplish his own set of tasks. Ned looked at his largely stripped guest solar. Almost all of his possessions were already packed or on their way to being so. A letter press containing correspondence, ink, quills, and other such things still sat on the overly ornate desk in the chamber, however.

Ned sat down at it and pulled out a sheet of parchment, a piece of sandstone, bottle of sand, and quill and ink. He had work to do. Robb’s letter was folded and pressed in his pocket. The information on it necessitated two things: he must speak to the King and the Hand nad he must _immediately_ write his son and wife. He chose to attend the latter task first.

“King Robert Baratheon of-.”

“For fuck’s sake, man, he knows who I am!”

Robert’s low, frustrated growl was followed by the low lull of Jon Arryn’s voice and it brought Ned to his feet in an instinct almost as old as he was. His writing materials abandoned on the desk, he realized he’d have to reverse order on his tasks. It was a pity, his temper had not cooled but he had gotten it back in his grip. He’d have liked more time to wrestle it into submission, however, after the wild ride it had taken over the last few hours.

“Your Grace, Lord Arryn.” Ned nodded. “I was just about to seek you out.”

“You were? Good.” Robert lowered himself into a seat without leave and Ned offered Jon a small smile as they both sank down as well. “I wanted to talk to you. What the hell are you doing moving your things around? Ned, you’re not leaving now, are you? You’ve barely been here a fortnight, and-.”

“My son wrote. The Ironmen are raiding my western coast.”

 _“What?”_ Robert spat, his blue eyes all but shooting sparks. “ _Greyjoy_ dares? His son-!”

“Theon Greyjoy is already dead.”

“What?” This time Jon Arryn was guilty of overusing the word. “Ned, slow down and explain, in detail, what is going on.”

“A raven arrived in my absence.” Ned elaborated. “My son took a small force to our coast and rallied the Mountain clans when he heard of raiding there. He found a shipload of Ironborn burning out and murdering my people wholesale. Every man, woman, and child in every village they crossed.”

“Damnation-.”

“Robert, please wait your turn.”

“Right,” The King of Westeros turned the agreement into an apology and reached up to scratch his beard before sitting forward and mixing a scowl with an expression that was almost eager. “How did the Greyjoy boy die? Was he behind this, Ned, and your boy dealt with it?”

“Robb’s considered Theon as much of a brother as you consider me for years.” Ned shook his head, his heart aching. He’d never been the father that boy needed; he hadn’t felt he could when Balon’s heartlessness could require him to behead the child at any moment on Robert’s orders. Now, at least, Theon was safe from that. “He died with honor. Robb and several others were separated from the main body of men and Theon saved several of them as he was the only archer. When he ran out of arrows he joined the fight and threw himself between Robb and an attacker, taking a war hammer to the face. He died for _my son_ and _your namesake_ , Robert, so speak well of him.”

“I wouldn’t do anything but.” Robert’s entire demeanor changed, his expression sad. “You’ve all the help you need.”

“When it rains, it pours.” Jon Arryn muttered and two sets of eyes, one blue and one gray turned towards the old man as he squared his shoulders. “Varys’ attention shall have to shift from matters at hand. We need to know what’s going on in the Iron Islands. I’ve heard nothing of them for ages. They’ve been quiet enough since the Rebellion, but they’ve been silent since the Plague.”

A terrible thought occurred to Ned.

“Jon…” Ned sat forward. “Was the incoulation spread to the Iron Islands?”

Jon Arryn sighed and shook his head, sitting back.

“That was the duty of the Lord Paramount’s involved, and you know as well as I that other than a few places you supplied, Doran Martell handled it. You’d do better to ask your goodson than I that question.”  
“Then what do you suspect?”

“I suspect that Doran Martell is kind enough to save many lives and practical enough to have ignored the single most devastating and rapacious population in Westeros.”

“Who the fuck is surprised by that?” Robert snorted and shook his head. “If they’d wanted help they should have been better neighbors. You don’t find the Redwyne Navy or the Crowlands fleet murdering and pillaging around the coasts.”

“If they were devastated it would explain why they’re reaving again. Balon could very well be dead, or if their thralls and the few free smallfolk they have died off and aren’t farming they’d be in desperate danger of starvation after only a few moons.”

“Ned’s right.” Jon sighed. “I shall have Varys look into it and inform Lord Tywin that his brother, Kevan, has to send someone as well. We must know and Ned has to return home to settle this.”

“Your son-.”  
“Is _five-and-ten_!” Ned gaped. “Your Grace, Robb cannot _lead_ a war again the Ironborn, if one comes about.”

“If it comes to more than raiding, _we’ll_ be leading the war, Ned.”

Robert Baratheon looked downright pleased at the prospect.

“He’s too young to be left alone and my people need me. It’s my duty to return.”

“Just like it’s the Viper’s _duty_ to take your daughters and flee in the night?”

“ _Aye_ , Robert, when people are attempting to murder my _kin_ then I am glad that they’re in the hands of a man dutiful enough to put protecting them over his pride, late as he is in coming to that decision!”

“If five-and-ten’s too young to fight in a few skirmishes, then what were you doing letting a man older than you are wed, bed, and seed a daughter you just implied was a _child_?”

“I had no choice!” Ned burst out, his temper breaking loose again. “Though I will tell you this; if the gods had to take Lyarra I am _grateful_ they chose the Viper for her! Dangerous and odd as the man is he treats her as an honorable man treats his wife and wears his duties as a father like an _honor_ , bastardy be damned!”

Robert looked as though Ned had stuck him and he was torn between a kind of terribly guilty satisfaction and grief that he couldn’t take the words back. Then both the King of Westeros and Warden of the North were distracted as Jon Arryn went to rise to his feet, and for the first time in either of their long memories of the man, _failed_ to do so. Instead the venerable Lord Hand braced one arm against the chair, half rose, and then with a groan his arm collapsed and he sat heavily again.

“Jon!”

“No, it’s fine, my arm just gave out.” Jon Arryn shook his his lips pressed together in pain as he kneading the flesh of his upper left arm. “I must have strained it in the yard against Ser Barristan some days ago. It’s been bothering me on and off for a fortnight. I wouldn’t hear you argue, boys, you _need_ each other. You’ve been brothers since you both came into my house, please don’t tell me that you’re going to let something break you apart now when war, grief, and time has failed to do so.”

“ _Never_.”

Ned’s fierce denial seemed to settle something in Robert, who pulled the heavy sofa he’d sat on forward easily and reached out to clasp his foster father’s right hand in his own.

“Ned’s right, Jon. We’re just tetchy. Nothing worse than when we’d squabble as boys.” The King of Westeros proclaimed, though it run hollow in Ned’s ears; he loved Robert like a brother but he was aware to the grief of his heart that Robert was not the boy he’d once been nor the man Ned thought he’d once known. “You’re sure it’s just a strained muscle?”

“I may have torn it.” Jon Arryn admitted. “I’ll have my own maester look it over shortly. _Before_ I return to the Vale.”

Robert’s face fell, then settled in grim lines.

“The succession?”  
“It can’t wait. I’ve got reports of several of my distant cousins amassing more men-at-arms than they need. I must settle this _now_ , Robert - _Your Grace_. It’s my duty to my house and my people.”  
“Ned…” Robert began to say, then paused, looking at his friend. To Ned’s surprise his king set his jaw and shook his head. “Ned’ll go back up North and settle whatever shit’s happening on his coast. Once he’s got a few Ironborn heads on Mormont spears you’ll see things calm down. You’ll get the succession settled and your heir chosen and be back in no time. I’m the bloody _King_ I can run my own realm for a couple of moons, unpleasant and unwanted as the damned job is.”  
“And Robert has my sword and my shield. _Always_.” Ned added, grateful for the chance to say it as Robert and Jon both turned to look at him. “You’re my King, Robert. I pledged my honor and my _faith_ to you when you took the throne and I mean it. The Martells are my kin now, I can’t deny it, but you are _family_ too.”

“Doran Martell will do nothing without an ironclad advantage.” Jon Arryn added, his tone cautionary and also hopeful. “The Viper ultimately will never cross his brother. He’s a warrior at heart and a knight, but Doran Martell is a _leader_. Right now your biggest weakness is how your Queen and Heir are behaving; it smears your reputation amongst your people.”

“I’ll have settled half of it soon enough, and the other half won’t plague me any time soon.” Robert grunted and turned to Ned. “I was coming to tell you; you don’t have to leave, Ned. At least not with such haste. Tywin’s packing his daughter up to the cruelest mother house in Westeros to see if Cersei might find it in her to have a heart after she’s had a few weeks marinating in her shame.”

“And the prince already off to Casterly Rock.”

“Yes.” Now Robert looked pained. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. How did I create someone like that, Ned?”

“I have no idea.” Ned breathed out exhausted and confused by just the idea. Robert had his faults but he wouldn’t torture anyone for _amusement_ and from what he’d seen of Joffrey he not only would, but he would blithely fail to see it that way because he did not see his victim _as_ a person. He might not even understand what a person was. “Don’t think on it. For now he’ll stay with Kevan Lannister and he’s a good, solid man. Hopefully the Queen will come back… more modest. She’ll fall with child and all will be well.”

“Gods willing, I will _pray_ for it.” Jon Arryn agreed and, in the quiet, added. “But I don’t imagine you feel you can delay, do you?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll miss you, Ned.” Robert finished and stood, his expression grim as he looked out the window. “Sun’s an hour off setting.”

Ned looked back, surprise painting his face.

“Then I have to go. The Dornish-.”

“Are leaving.” Robert’s expression became haunted. “I’ll come with you. To take my leave of the Princess.”

“ _Prince Oberyn’s Party_.” Jon Arryn corrected wearily, but nobody said anything in response.

For his part Ned just stood quietly. He was surrounded by two men who’d been his family for most of his childhood. He loved Jon as he’d loved Rickard Stark and in the dark quiet hours of his life he could admit, perhaps, to even loving him better. Robert was his brother and once he’d fancied he knew him better than he knew Benjen; he’d _known_ that he knew him better than he had ever known Brandon. Now Ned was beginning to realize that he didn’t know them nearly as well as he thought and he was left bitterly wondering if there was some rot buried in the very red stones at his feet.

“What are you thinking, Ned?” Robert asked quietly as they both stood and their guards formed around them at the door.

“You’ll mislike it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Perhaps Aegon the Conqueror cursed this place when he built it.”

King Robert Baratheon’s broad face went grim and he said nothing in response. Beside them both Jon Arryn blew out a frustrated breath. Nothing more was said as they made their way down to the courtyard, however.

 

* * *

 

Ser Barristan Selmy watched nervously as the Dornish Party assembled again, this time for its leave taking. There should have been a feast. There should have been some grand ceremony. Instead, the highest ranking of the kingdom’s vassals left without fanfare and with unseemly haste. They left with grim silence. The King attended them dressed in the slightly rumpled silks he’d changed into after coming back from settling the brigands, and Barristan decided he was grateful for it. King Robert was so infuriated by what had happened in his absence he was getting totally underfoot in everyone’s efforts to deal with it, he was too impatient to do more than muddle facts and aggravate the process, but at least he wasn’t drunk.

Lady Gwyn Parren was pale as milkglass underneath the vibrant soft gold of her hair. Wearing a draped gown of pale emerald green silk in the Dornish fashion and with a thin cotton blanket in vivid colors draped across her the young maiden looked more like some dramatic tapestry than a part of even _his_ rather remarkable daily life as she was brought out of the castle on a litter. The poor child was also sleeping as if she was dead; the result of a combination of whatever potions she had been given for her wound and blood loss.

Beside her walked the Red Viper and once again he was dressed in the practical armor the man favored for combat. He wore scalemail dipped in copper, his slightly battered red leather surcoat. Greaves, vambraces, and the other accoutrements of battle suited his lean form well. Like all the other members of his party, he was well armed.

The Princess Lyarra wore a gray northern gown in velvet. It was simply done and dark enough to gleam like living shadow or smoke in the fading evening light. With her hair a dark cape down her back and her eyes huge and luminous she had never looked more like her Aunt in Harrenhal. Selmy took a moment to grieve that she looked so much like her father; he was now quite sure her mother had been the Lady Ashara. She held herself with such grace he could attribute it to no other as she stood tucked against her husband’s side.

“Princess, I hope you know I’ll see them all punished for this.” The King’s words were predictable as was the grief in his face; he also saw a lost love in the woman. “I’m grieved that you’re leaving so soon. Your company is - is something to treasure.”

The girl didn’t wince, but she looked like she was trying not to. Instead she curtsied demurely.

“We are grateful for your hospitality and generosity, Your Grace, and I will never forget my time here.”

Her answer was graceful and proper, but Barristan had served enough royalty to hear the warning in her tone. If the King still held Eddard Stark’s loyalty after this to any degree the Princess Lyarra held the man in well-concealed and dismayed contempt. If the Warden of the North’s amused and loving stories of how close to heir to the North was with his sister then Barristan didn’t hold out much hope for the Baratheon dynasty retaining that loyalty another generation. Rickard Stark’s great alliance was breaking down.

“I’m glad.” The King’s hand continue to clasp hers as she stood awkwardly after their goodbyes until Lord Stark shifted, his expression stony and his eyes shuttered. Then the king dropped her hand and they moved on.

The Red Viper looked on through all this, coiled and seething. Barristan reminded himself to have the tasters on high alert and to have the King’s bath scrubbed down with ground toadstone powder to prevent poison. If the vengeful man had left anything behind to bring a reckoning in his wake then Barristan was duty bound to think of a way to prevent it.

The ridiculous Volantine theory aside, what _had_ the Queen been thinking? Barristan watched everything that went on carefully through the rest of the lead taking. The King barely nodded his head at Lord Gargalen or Prince Oberyn. Both men barely bowed back. Nothing was said. That was bad show, Barristan thought, some recompense should have been offered. This was too clear a split…

But no-one had asked him, had they?

That was the most tiring aspect of his oath now, Barristan reflected. It was not his duties, for he bore them well and they often felt like they buoyed him up. He was a man who liked to know where he stood in the world and his oaths told him that in a way that was honorable and clear. It was that he’d lived so many years of life and seen so much and now it seemed no-one cared to hear what he’d learned or make _their_ lives better by listening. He’d wanted to do great things and serve great kings once. Now he felt he would have been satisfied to simply see justice done properly.

He led the escort that went with the Dornish party down to the docks. This time there was no raid on the flower market. The crowd was there, but it was smaller. The word hadn’t apparently gotten out through all of the city that the Martells were leaving. Those who had found out, or were watching to see if they’d emerge, sensed the mood. The crowd was one of quiet murmuring, hands reaching out, searching for approval as the riders passed by.

Prince Oberyn reached out, clasped wrists with the peasants, and the others did the same. Barristan caught sight of the princess pressing a handkerchief into the hand of a little boy atop his father’s shoulders. The look of shock and delight on his face was one Barristan would wistfully carry with him when he watched the Queen’s heavily guarded procession lead her out of the city five days later to the tune of screaming and hurling dung and refuse at her wheelhouse and the many men guarding it.

The party ended up standing inside a bubble of space within a perimeter of guards at the docks. The usual smells of the sewers making their egress into the bay, rotted vegetables, fresh salt air, and the brackish scents of the river meeting the sea hung in the air there like a dirty blanket. With several questions close on his mind and the investigation a responsibility he was actually eager to execute and standing at the forefront of his mind, Ser Barristan moved forward to see if he couldn’t have a few words before they departed for the far end of Westeros.

“Prince Oberyn, before they go, I wonder if I might have a word with your wife and her ladies. I did not get much speech with them and the King has personally charged me in securing justice for what happened to you.”

“And you expect the _Master of Laws_ to assist you in this at every turn, yes?” Prince Oberyn snapped back as he helped his wife down from her own litter.

Princess Lyarra looked decidedly pale and a little green as she got down. He spent a moment worried. If this was some late and delayed poison or injury not only would his heart break to see Ashara’s child suffer, for his was now much convinced she was Ashara Dayne’s child, but he was sure there would be war. Doran Martell was a calm and patient man, but even he had to have his limits. Another dead sibling would surely have crossed them.

“I expect that Lord Tywin shall act as he sees fit and in no other manner.” Barristan allowed and the Red Viper hissed out something close to a laugh but far too bitter to be considered amusement. “Princess Lyarra, are you well?”

“I’m fine. The babe doesn’t like the smell.”

“The babe has better sense than some adults.”

He got a smile for that. Meanwhile the Lady Gwyn’s litter had been brought closer by the two Dornish guards bearing it. It was a light thing, more stretcher than anything else. He wondered for a moment where they’d found such a light litter on such short notice when most of the litters in the capital were ornate and heavy as the Queen had long promoted such stylings. On closer examination he realized the litter _was_ a stretcher; two spears with canvas stretched between them, and two thin canes bent and tied in place with a large rectangular shawl draped over them to guard her from the sun.

Finding the lady still unconscious he turned to the other lady he felt a need to address. As he spoke to Lady Walda the Red Viper directed Ser Damien Sand and Lady Jynessa to see his patient comfortably situated in her cabin. He asked to be sent for when she awoke, or if any signs of fever presented themselves.

“Lady Walda. I have something for you, if you will forgive my boldness in giving such a gift.”

Reaching down to his belt he removed a good, sturdy mace from where it hung. The blued steel of it was freshly polished and brightened. In the light, along the spine of it above the handle but before where the four flanges of the head branched out, little silver gilt likes caught and glinted in the sun.

“With my compliments, and the understanding that it takes great bravery for a knight to go into battle, but more for the young and untried to face danger unasked for, not out of duty, but out of affection.”

 _“Oh,_ thank you, Ser Barristan. This is the one from the gallery...” Lady Walda looked absolutely shocked as she took the weapon. “Oh, you had it engraved?”

“I thought it fitting.”

The mace now had the two towers of the Twins picked out in silver here and there amidst other scrollwork.

“A pretty weapon for a lovely lady.” He offered for a warm smile, thinking that House Frey had been unusually blessed by the Gods in being offered such a loyal, decent, and sweet daughter. As usual, they hadn’t seen it. “May you never need to wield it again, but if you do, may you always wield it as justly.”

The girl blushed prettily, but she did not stammer as she smiled under his attentions. Instead she tucked the mace into one plump elbow and curtsied. It made an odd picture there where a bouquet would have normally been painted or drawn by some artist. Barristan reflected that, when the ladies replaced flowers with maces, they were coming to difficult times.

That accomplished, Barristan turned towards Princess Lyarra, pleased that Lady Gwyn stayed at her side along with the Red Viper. He wished to speak with all of them. He would have most especially liked to have words with the Lady Gwyn, but he wasn’t going to force an injured and traumatized maiden to wake from a drugged stupor just so he could ask a few questions that could likely be answered just as well by the others.

“Your Grace, please forgive me if it distresses you, but I have to ask.” He leaned forward and locked his blue eyes with the soft gray eyes of the young Princess. “Lady Walda said that Amory Lorch chased the Lady Gwyn when she taunted him.”

“That is what I’ve been told, yes, Ser Barristan. I arrived afterwards.”

“Then, Lady Walda, can you tell me if he paused or some move towards the Princess’ door when the Lady Gwyn did this.”

“No.”

“He took chase directly?”

“He did.”

Ser Barristan frowned. As he tried to think of some way to speak diplomatically he found it unnecessary. He was left rather refreshed as he was introduced to what others would tell him was fairly typical Northern bluntness.

“I don’t think that piece of offal was actually there to kill me.” Princess Lyarra stated, frowning. “Or at least that I wasn’t who he was _sent_ to kill. He likely wanted me dead so Oberyn couldn’t kill _him_ , but I think he was sent to kill _Gwyn_.”

Barristan frowned, but nodded. The Red Viper turned and looked at Lyarra in surprise before his own face settled into knowing lines. While Barristan had a _suspicion_ in that direction, he now found himself vexed for another reason.

“Princess Lyarra, forgive me, but why would the Queen of Westeros wish to kill a modestly dowered lady who is her own distant kin?” Barristan asked. “Did something happen at Casterly Rock?”

“Gwyn doesn’t speak of the Rock.”

“Ser Barristan,” The Red Viper weighed in, and his black eyes glittered like bits of jet catching the light of a dying fire, “if that _were_ the case, wouldn’t you agree that it would be far more likely for _Lord Tywin_ to attempt to settle the matter, and if so, far more efficiently? After all, Casterly Rock is _his_ domain. The Queen has been a creature of the capitol for many years now.”

“I would have to agree.”

Barristan looked between the Prince and his wife, seeing their eyes flick towards each other briefly. The Princess leaned towards him, and the movement was only something Barristan caught because of decades of experience watching for some sign of a madman’s rage or hint of unexpected attack on unpopular royalty. He recognized the subtlety of two soulmates communicating wordlessly, and it was the Lady Lyarra who spoke next.

“Lord Commander, didn’t _you_ notice anything strange in the Queen’s behavior towards my lady-in-waiting?”

Barristan the Bold finally had the excuse to ask a question that had been burning in his mind for days.

“I had wished to ask the Lady Gwyn what _precisely_ the song she was going to sing was, or would have been, had Queen Cersei not thrown her glass of wine in the lady’s face.”

“Why,” The Viper smiled and his teeth flashed white and threatening with the otherwise pleasant expression, “the Lady Gwyn said it was a song about the origins of House Parren.”

“Yes?”

Well, that was confusing. What could such a song have in it that would warrant a glass of wine to the face?

“ _Yes_. You’re a Stormlander, I believe?”

“I’m a Marcher, born and bred.”

“Well, I will forgive you for it.” The Dornishman had the gall to jape and his wife subtly elbowed him in the side before picking up the conversation with a question.

“Have you ever heard of what became of Orys Baratheon’s third son?”

“I’m aware he had one.” Barristan frowned and threw his mind back to lessons of his boyhood, nearly forgotten. “I believe he went adventuring and never returned. Perhaps he was lost in Essos?”

“No.” The Princess shook her head. “Gwyn told me that Orys Baratheon’s youngest son assisted a Lord of the Rock with some Ironborn raids and was granted the man’s daughter and the lands the original House Parren inhabited in return. He took the name Parren just to vex his elder brother, who then disowned his entirely from House Baratheon.”

“I see.” Barristan said, though he frowned as he did not. Slowly he shook his head. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I fail to see how a song about such could warrant the Queen’s wrath to such a point as we all realize was stirred here. She is easily infuriated by comments on her marriage, but this goes far beyond snubbing you at court or humiliating you in public.”

“Lord Commander,” The Red Viper stepped forward and his voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned inward to convey information he obviously didn’t want caught by any lip-reader in the crowd. Barristan was familiar with the precautions one must take in Varys’ domain, but he was surprised by the presumption that there was a _need_ for such secrecy. What could possibly be so devestating that was hidden in a simple ballad about a mid-level Westerlands’ bannerman’s family origins? “Would it help you to understand if I told you that the Layd Gwyn is the _first_ blonde born into House Parren since Orys Baratheon’s son took his Lannister bride and established his house?”

A cold coil of something began to quiver in the great knight’s stomach and his eyes snapped up to the Prince’s, which were as steady and unblinking as that of a fence lizard staring down a praying mantis. Neither was quite large enough to be a predator. Neither was specifically prey. Both were caught in a dangerous situation. Barristan suddenly sympathized as he began to catch the drift of what the man was implying.

“Every generation since the Parrens have married someone descended from Lann the Clever, I am told. Each wife of House Parren since then - ten generations if you count the first marriage - has been blonde.” Oberyn Martell hissed. “Until that girl you watched carried out of that keep on a litter was born _every single child_ born to House Parren had dark hair and blue eyes.”

“What you are suggesting is _treason_.” The Lord Commander pointed out, the cold creature in his belly beginning to slither up his spine even as his instincts started to howl.

“Certainly worth killing over.” The Prince observed quietly.

“The lady’s looks and thoughts on the matter do not constitute _proof_.”

“Then _find_ it.”

“Or not.” Princess Lyarra’s voice cut in. “Ser Barristan, I have nothing but respect for you. You’ve been a knight and lived according to the vows of such for longer than my father has been alive. You understand the value of truth. _I_ am not a knight, however. _I_ am, at the heart of it, still Ned Stark’s bastard daughter and I say now that I don’t _care_ anymore. The Queen can do as she wills here and I will leave and go on with my life. Please make it clear, however, that my family _will_ be safe and any attempt to make it otherwise shall be interpreted in the same way the ancestors of my _blood_ would have seen such an insult. Ask anyone who has lived beyond the walls of this city; when winter comes, the wolves do not _negotiate_.”

“I believe my Princess has said all that needs to be said on the matter.” Oberyn Martell smirked. “Our ship is ready. Do with what you will with what you’ve heard.”

Jaw clenched around a thousand other questions, Barristan stepped back and bowed politely. As he watched the Dornish party turned and Lord Stark stepped forward. The man had been held back momentarily by Lord Gargalen. Barristan thought this might have been intentional, but then the man caught his eye and he realized that any thoughts that Lord Stark _hadn’t_ been informed were false. The pinched, pale lines around his eyes and mouth were shocked enough to speak of the potential revelation they’d just been offered.

 _It would_ , Barristan’s mind whispered to him, _explain much_. The King was not cruel, usually, unless you were a Targaryen. He was quick to anger, but quick to forgive. He was also faultlessly brave in battle and eager for conflict.

Prince Joffrey was none of these things. He’d always attributed it to the boy being raised clinging so closely to his mother’s skirts. Queen Cersei was petty, often cruel, and her courage was a strange thing that ran strongly towards manipulation. Joffrey, who issued orders to others to do his dirty work, had that in common with her.

Joffrey had _everything_ in common with her. That was why Barristan had never entertained thoughts of infidelity. Joffrey merely took too much after his mother. Now that he thought of it, though, shouldn’t _something_ of the King be visible in the boy? At the very least there should be some physical resemblance.

He’d watched the boy grow up and quickly racked his brain for some similar feature. He could not find one. Abandoning the boy’s face and coloring he thought instead to his build. There he drew a blank as well. The boy was built lean, tall but not excessively, and his bone structure was delicate and swift. The men of House Baratheon were universally big mean with heavy bones structure. So were most of the Stormlands families that could claim repeated intermarriage with Baratheon descendants.

 _None of this_ , Barristan thought grimly, _was proof_. If it was true, proof would be needed. A great deal of proof, elsewise Tywin Lannister would do all in his considerable power to avert seeing justice done. Even now Barristan was sure he was guarding the Queen in his position as Master of Laws.

Finding proof would be nearly impossible. Proving infidelity in the past was nearly impossible. Though...given that _all_ of the Queen’s children had looked just as golden, green-eyed, and Lannister as her first… Mayhaps the affair was still alive and continuing? His head beginning to ache and his heart pound Ser Barristan realized that he had found an investigation ever so much more crucial than the one into Amory Lorch’s disgraceful behavior.

 

* * *

 

Lyarra couldn’t hold back the tears that slipped from her eyes as she stood in her father’s arms on the deck of _The Wave’s Kiss_. The Dornish ship was large and made for comfortable transport. She wished that they’d taken it directly from White Harbor to Sunspear as Oberyn had originally intended, yet wouldn’t that have brought this parting that much faster?  
“I’ll miss you, Father.”

“And I you, but you’re well-wed, going to where you will be safe and treasured as you deserve, and are making me a grandfather.” Lord Stark offered in an attempt at humor that failed utterly. “What more could any father ask?”

“That we not be weeks of sailing or moons of travel apart?”

“Aye, well, if he dies there’s always Smalljon.”

“I heard that!”

Lyarra managed a watery laugh at her husband’s yell from across the deck where he stood with the captain. Her face was pressed against her father’s chest before she looked up into his gray eyes. Her father released her from their hug. It was almost like a physical pain, but he quickly framed her face with his hands and then dropped a kiss on her forehead.

“You won’t forget.”

“I promised that when you were safely delivered of your child I would come South and tell you of your mother. I am ever as good as my word, but first let me attend to matters in the North.”

“I can’t believe Theon’s gone.”

Her father’s eyes closed in pain.

“You never can, in war. I still expect your Grandfather to appear some days and demand an accounting of what I’ve been up to.”

Ned Stark stepped back and a moment later his other daughter launched herself at him like a bolt loose from a crossbow. He held Arya tight and Lyarra listened as he offered her all the same reassurances of love. To them he added his faith that she would never shame or harm their family’s name, and that he expected her to be the best swordswoman her age in Dorne when he saw her next. Apparently her ‘dancing lessons’ had not been inexpensive.

It was a long farewell. Lyarra ended up with her husband’s arms around her before the end of it, leaning back against his chest as her father turned to the other members of their party. He bowed to Lord Gargalen. He kissed Walda’s hand. Then he turned to Oberyn.

“I should kick your arse for not coming directly to me as soon as Gwyn spoke to her of her suspicions about the Queen and the Prince.” Ned Stark’s low, rumbling growl, caused both of the direwolves sniffing curiously about the deck to stop what they were doing and look towards the sound and away from the sailors they were making nervous. “Do you realize what we could have averted if we just had a _reason_ to put that woman aside?”

“Silence, my brother is always telling me, is its own protection.” Lyarra listened to her soulmate drawl sarcastically before his voice turned to disgust. “Besides, what proof would you offer? The word of a girl who hates the Lannisters nearly as much a _I_ do? Or, perhaps, you would expect _me_ to stick my neck out for the Usurper so that he may shrive himself of the only woman he likely _deserves_ to be wed to?”

Lord Stark offered no answer at first. Her father, Lyarra thought, looked exhausted. Little wonder after fighting a battle, riding hell bent for leather most of the day to return from that battle, and then everything he’d learned in the aftermath. Finally, after a long pause, he answered Oberyn.

“Prince Doran is not wrong about the value of silence. You would do better to employ it more often, Prince Oberyn, but if you expect me to be your ally then I will not be led around in the dark.”

“ _Ah_ , but there is the problem, Lord Stark. As of now I _expect_ you to protect your daughter. I do not expect you to be _my_ ally beyond what the realm of honor dictates is necessary via a marriage contract and your conscience, and I have seen how even that bends in the face of friendship. Little that I love her, we've both seen the Queen's bruises.”

Lyarra winced, but no-one standing there had an answer for that and an awkward silence fell until her father finally broke it.

"Aye." Lord Stark agreed quietly, looking up slowly. "You're not wrong. For the love of family, I have done and would do much my honor rebels at. You would do the same. We have that much in common... You are my kin, by marriage and before the Gods. If Dorne asks, I am here."

Oberyn stared at him in shock then, and Lyarra felt her heart twist in love for the man who'd taken her and raised her and  _claimed_ her even when so many would have walked away. After a moment her husband bowed to her father, low and with clear respect. It was not the trust and affection Lyarra wished she could see between them, but it was far better than what had existed at the beginning of the journey that had truly brought her and her soulmate together. Finally, Lord Gargalen spoke again, his tone and his words practical.

“Ser Barristan is likely the best man to look into it.” The elderly Lord stated firmly. “He is honest to a fault, loyal enough, and so dogged when he seeks something that his word will not be questioned on the matter. As a Lord Paramount you've enough power and enough stake in political matters, Lord Stark, that someone would always manage to protest or frame some word or gesture to show bias should you be the one chosen. Not to mention the man's experience in the courts of three kings. If proof can be found in this matter, Ser Barristan will seek it out and those _we_ care about shall be safely in their own country where neither the Lannisters’ wrath nor the King’s can spill over in madness.”

“Better him than me.” Ned Stark snorted wryly and turned to Lyarra and her husband again. “My ship for White Harbor will leave early tomorrow. Send your letters to Winterfell and my Lady will see that I get them as directly as I may. Things may be confused for a while, if the Ironborn are truly in revolt.”

“We shall.” Oberyn agreed and took her father’s hand and clasped his wrist when it was offered, with both men looking the picture of reluctant allies.

Then Lord Stark walked down the ramp of the ship and Lyarra felt her childhood snap shut like a book too swiftly closed.

 

* * *

 

“Well, it is not poisoned.”

Oberyn relinquished the letter he’d spent the last hour testing with some reluctance and no little disgust. Their ship was crossing Blackwater Bay now and while the soft lap and roll of the waves beneath the hull would normally have calmed him, he could not feel any peace. It was a bitter pill to swallow as he sank down onto the second bed in the tiny cabin that Walda and Gwyn would share on the journey. He would, with luck, not spend much time there. If he did, it meant that something was going wrong with Gwyn’s wound.

As it was, he was worried about the strange gleam in the girl’s blue eyes building into fever. His mind went to Tyene’s own bright eyes; shaped just as his, but blue as ice. He felt his heart clench as he recalled her final illness. She’d avoided the plague itself but fallen victim to a sickness picked up treating the ill. Exhaustion had already fallen up on her and without the strength to fight it, his daughter had been eaten alive by a fever she might have otherwise weathered in a day or two with little effort.

How his heart ached for her.

Had Ellaria been there Oberyn knew she’d have taken him into her arms and led him to bed. She’d have coaxed him into climax against her body with sweet hands and sweeter words. Her love would have soothed him and he would have found sleep. Lyarra, sitting beside him on the bed, was made differently. Nurturing she was, but also _young_ . Her main concern was her friend and she trusted _him_ to be strong and wise. Ellaria was, he felt, surely laughing from wherever she watched in heaven.

Gwyn didn’t say anything, just took the letter and looked at it. Her lips moved a little a she read through it. Oberyn watched her with narrowed eyes and reflected that she’d been honest. She did not read well. His daughters all had read more swiftly than the girl at eight years old. He vowed to personally oversee correcting the gaps the Lannisters had left in her education in Sunspear. His pride demanded it, and it would be a tidy little bit of comeuppance for the way the girl kept secrets and played games.

 _Or,_ he thought _, perhaps I will throw her to Doran. He’ll enjoy the way her mind works,_ and _he’s far better at it. That seems like a more than just punishment for her behavior and his determination to send me to that wretched place to begin with._

“Well,” Lyarra accepted the letter when Gwyn passed it to her and read it. Walda, who was sitting at the foot of Gwyn’s narrow bed, held out her hand and took the short missive as well, “that’s bland.”

“Lord Tyrion is a terrible suitor.” Walda complained. “This isn’t romantic _at all_ . It’s not even creepy and plotting or proper for _clandestine_ romance. No-one will ever write a song about this.”

“If ever I have the chance, Walda, you and my sister Sansa are going to meet and get on _famously_.” Lyarra laughed a little and Oberyn managed a smirk at all of them through his black mood.

“The Lady Sansa shall steal her and all of our hearts shall be broken.” Oberyn observed. “I am more annoyed that he sent _my wife_ such a fine gift. Those scrolls in Old Valyrian he sent you are ancient and _priceless_. Wherever did he get them? The Citadel snatches such things up wildly and the Usurper either burned or handed over all such things to the Maesters when he took the Red Keep.”

“They’re from that little library we found. I was trying to translate what I could before we left.” Lyarra explained to him with a touch of eagerness that was soon tempered by a certain shame. “I - do you think this means that he _stole_ them from the King?”

“I do believe it does, and if he weren’t a Lannister I might like him in some small measure for that. As it is, I shall be testing _them_ for contact poison as well.”

“Just don’t _damage_ them.”

“Even my soulmate has no faith in me.” Oberyn lamented, then reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do not blame her.”

“Oberyn-.” Lyarra began, her fingers seeking out the sensitive skin of the Mark on his wrist, but he gently pulled it from her reach. He did not deserve to be soothed.

“No, let us be honest. I have failed in all I set out to do and every reason I _had_ for staying so long in that cursed place. _You_ avenged my niece, not I. I know nothing of Elia’s killer. While I know the Usurper’s reign is perilous, it is not yet without support. _Including_ your own father, my wife, I feel I must add. Meanwhile you were nearly killed and our babe with you _twice_ because of my heedlessness, a lady under mine own protection was injured, and I failed utterly to secure the _one thing_ that would have brought the Lannisters closer to destruction than-.”

“Look under the bed!” Arya, who had been silently sitting on the floor grinned brightly at that, shoving his feet aside. “Really, stop talking and _look_ , Prince Oberyn!”

Oberyn paused for a bare second and then did as she asked. Several small crates had been shoved underneath the bed he was sitting on. A quick glance past the various skirts in the room obstructing his view showed more such boxes underneath the bed Gwyn was laying on. Dragging one out he let out a small noise of shock as he took in a bundle wrapped in oilcloth. Quickly unwrapping it the Red Viper let out a cry of shock and immediately pulled one of the books inside up and into his lap.

The thin volume was bound in plain brown leather. It was a ledger of the most unremarkable sort. Merchants everywhere used the same kind and quality. When he opened it, however, he noted the tiny, impeccably neat hand it was written in. Something especially intriguing as it was filled with _symbols_ rather than letters he recognized, including in the many columns where numbers should have been kept.

Looking up he found Lyarra looking downright exasperated. The three other girls in the room, however, were grinning like the purring black cat currently sprawled over Walda’s lap. All looked well fed and feline, even pale and wan Lady Gwyn, save for Arya Stark. Her face was a little too lupine to pull off the look of a well-fed cat.

“These are Petyr Baelish’ copies of the royal accounting, aren’t they?” He didn’t have the slightest doubt.

“Yes.” Walda replied smugly.

“Yes!” Arya’s yell drowned her out a little, though. “Gwyn sent me to get them while I was supposed to be in her room. I climbed out of her window and jumped to the one for father’s solar and then went out that way, _and_ since we’re already sailing you can’t send me back to Winterfell!”

“We could still put into port at Duskendale.” Oberyn replied sharply, allowed a moment of fear to play over Lady Arya’s face and then promptly dragged her off the floor as he stood up and spun her around once, causing the other ladies to dodge away from her feet. “For the service you have done my house, however, I shall not!”

Arya Stark grinned at him.

“You will have the most elegant calligraphy in _Dorne_ by the time we reach Sunspear, however, for your punishment is going to live in _infamy_.”

Arya Stark winced and her grin because a helpless little crooked smile.

“Lady Walda, what was your part in this?” Oberyn demanded.

“That’s what I would like to know?” Lyarra threw in her own inquisition. “Did everyone know of this but me?”

“No, just Gwyn, myself, and one other. She just sent Arya out because I couldn’t go.” Walda looked over at Gwyn, who was laying quietly in the bed, having set Lord Tyrion’s bland letter aside to watch the room with her blue eyes flickering back and forth from sleepy from the potions Oberyn had her on to overbright from whatever was going on behind them in the twisted cavern’s of the girl’s mind. “Lady Gwyn told me about it the second day at the Keep. She said that we needed to find the books, and after everything you’ve done for me, I wanted to help.”

“What say you to this, Gwyn?” Oberyn asked and Lyarra looked on.

Oberyn watched and waited for a reaction. What followed what not what he expected. The girl, who had so often flickered back and forth between nervous energy, deep and profound terror, and a kind of wild confidence he recalled from the more desperate days of his own youth had been largely peaceful since he’d begun treating her. Now, however, Gwyn took a handkerchief and had been setting on the bed’s think blanket and idly crumpled it in her hands.

The little blonde’s blue eyes clenched shut and she pressed her hands together in her lap until her knuckles grew white around the twisted scrap of linen. Her hands did not shake, though. He was opening his mouth to apologize, to sooth Gwyn’s fears of further Lannister reprisal or of his own disapproval of her actions and felt Lyarra lean forward to do the same. He said nothing, though, for when she opened her eyes it was to look up at him with an expression he couldn’t name and he found it stilled his tongue.  
“I am not the only person in this room whose sister was murdered by the Mountain Who Rides.” Gwyn’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it lashed like a scream across every nerve in Oberyn’s body. He barely heard Lyanna’s sharp intake of breath or Daemon’s sudden hiss of quiet outrage. Hate was a noisy thing.

 _“What?”_ Lyarra breathed in shock.

“When Lord Stark said we have much in common, Prince Oberyn, he spoke of our sisters.” Lady Gwyn explained, her blue eyes a contained mass of burning color. “I too had an older sister I loved once, and her name was Tannis.”

Gwyn stopped then, blinking against tears as her mouth twisted in anger and a thread loudly snapped in the handkerchief in her hands. Slowly, deliberately, in the way of someone who was doing something with their hands to prevent either injury or violence, she set the handkerchief aside. Beside him, Oberyn felt his soulmate all but radiating distress. For himself, Oberyn didn’t even register sliding to kneel beside the bed where he could look the girl in the eyes as she went on.

“Tannis was seven years older than me. I was smarter, but she was always kinder. Tannis was _patient_ with a little sister who would never behave. I dumped spiders on passersby from our house’s second story window and I put little peeping frogs into pitchers of ale when nobody was looking. Tannis was always there to laugh and scold and play with me, though.”

Gwyn swallowed almost painfully, the tears tangling with the dark honey bristles of her lashes.

“Tannis was beautiful, like Lyarra. Her skin tanned like mine, but her hair was almost black. We both have our father’s eyes, and my grandfather’s shipping business meant our dowries were good for girls of our sort of family. Then grandfather died when the Ironborn came and burned Lannisport, father died a couple of years later, mother got sick, and it was decided Tannis and I would both be best taken care of if given the _honor_ of places in Lady Genna Lannister’s household.”  
Oberyn felt something in his mind coldly slide into place like gears fitting together after being fashioned and turned for the first time. That was a minor thing, however. Overall a storm was building in his chest made of fury, grief, and compassion that far outstripped his grip on logic.

“Was it any wonder that Gregor Clegane asked for her hand, or that Lord Parren allowed it? After all, the man was such a _favored_ bannerman of Lord Tywin considering _all he’d done_.”

“Oh, _indeed_ .” Oberyn breathed, his breath a sibilant thing, living and writhing in the tense air of the cabin as three other pairs of eyes and ears sat silent and riveted. “ _Such_ things he’d done.”

“Raping and murdering a princess, killing a prince.” Gwyn with a vicious mockery of a smile as she struggled up wards and sat. “Why, it takes a _special_ man to do things like that, don’t you think?”

“He killed your sister?” Lyarra’s horror hushed her voice to a low noise of distress. “His own _wife_?”

“He killed closer kin than that, Lyarra.”

“ _His face_ …” Arya spoke, her expression suddenly shifting. “That - Sandor’s face, your friend, he’s the Mountain’s brother?”

“The Mountain hasn’t earned the right to be anyone’s brother!” Gwyn spat back, shaking her head and sending her golden hair dancing around her only to settle wild and tangled around her shoulders and partially obscure her eyes. “His father’s supposed hunting accident aside, his mother just _happening_ to be struck in the head by a falling stone from their tower house’s roof, there was a Clegane _sister_ as well and no-one’s even bothered to make up a story for how _she_ died. Gregor Clegane just told the world she was dead one day and everyone in the Westerlands knew better than to _ask questions_. Just like nobody asked Old Clegane how his younger son’s face and hands were all that got burned all those years ago in a supposed bedclothes fire.”

“And the Lannisters just _let_ this man marry one of their own kin.”

“The poor relations don’t count, Prince Oberyn.”

Lyarra got up and went to sit beside Gwyn on the bed, tangling her hands with Gwyn’s. At that Gwyn’s composure broke and she reached up with one hand, messily rubbing at her tears as they fell. She shook her head.

“We weren’t rich or landed or _known_ , to rank the attentions of a Silent Sister for our dead. As my mother tended to her father and mine, as my sister and I tended to my mother, I was ten-years-old when my sister’s body was laid out for burial and I washed and bound it. Gregor Clegane said she died in childbed, but her belly was flat and I don’t know of the labor symptoms that result in a skull crushed so badly your brains leak out past the shattered bone and your eyes lay against your cheeks like on strings.”

Walda clamped a hand over her mouth and whimpered, but Oberyn just felt his fury fire. HIs mind painted a vivid picture of a girl with Gwyn’s face and eyes but Lyarra’s wild dark hair. Accurate or not, it was how he would think of the girl from that moment onward, interspersed with images of his sister’s withered corpse and the tiny bones of her children. Aegon’s skull, fractured into dozens of pieces, seemed to tumble before his eyes like a ghostly mummer’s show.

Gwyn wasn’t done, however, and as she looked up she bared her teeth.

“My grandfather was a smart man. Our dowries were trusted to the Iron Bank, and if we died before producing issue then the funds were not released. That’s why _my_ dowry is so good; it’s not just mine, it’s Tannis’ as well.”

“Her dowry reverted to the original account and was added to your own.” Oberyn nodded, then sat forward. “Lady Gwyn _why_ did you not tell me this earlier?”

All of the ferocity and fight seemed to drain out of her then, leaving a sick, pale girl who sank back against her pillows and clutched limply at her friend’s hands.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be helpless like that. All your life you’ve been strong and deadly and a _prince_ . You wouldn’t be _careful_. I can’t loose another sister.”

“And you won’t.” Lyarra promised. “Oberyn is not going to do anything stupid.”

Oberyn opened his mouth, closed, it, and ran a hand over his face. His first instinct was to change the ship’s course. It was to issue new orders to the crew. It was to do _anything_ but simply quietly sail back to Sunspear as ordered and tell his brother of this new information - _this Name_ \- as if it was nothing more than one piece of intelligence to add to his brother’s endless store of it.

One look at Lyarra sitting there, her expression twisted in shared grief, was enough to stop him. Somewhere he felt that the Gods were laughing. Or, perhaps, they were not. If not for the Mark on his wrist how would he have met, let alone ever cared in the slightest for, the Lannister-looking child who was now speaking? Perhaps the gods were neither truly foolish nor evil. Or maybe this was the work of Lyarra’s Old Gods and he’d just never seen there work before.

“When the King and his party came to the Rock everyone was so busy I didn’t matter in the slightest. Nobody cared about Tannis and how she died. Nobody cared about _me_ when Gregor Clegane sought another wife and a fatter dowry where he’d already found one.”

“What?” Oberyn’s head shot up in shock.

“Why do you think I hate being helpless so?” Gwyn demanded, snorting loudly and then sniffling and looking at the cabin’s wall as if she couldn’t bare to see someone else’s face as she spoke. “How do you think I came to be Sandor Clegane’s friend so much that he would help me go North and help me again now?”

“Now?” Lyarra asked and Arya piped up.

“He went with me when I snuck out, and he carried the ledgers back. Well, sort of, there were so many he hit this guy in the head and stole his wheelbarrow. Then we threw him in the ditch! He let me hold his feet.”

Oberyn muffled a disbelieving laugh at Arya’s enthusiasm for skullduggery. One day he was going to enjoy relating this story to Eddard Stark _very much_. One day when his mind was less a whirlwind of dark emotion.

“I didn’t send Arya out alone to get the ledgers, Lyarra, I wouldn’t risk your sister like that! I sent her with the nastiest, scariest, man I know - and the closest thing to a brother I have, pitiful as that is. He fought his brother once for me, though he did it mostly because he wishes to kill the Mountain, but why shouldn’t he? Gregor Clegane’s done more to hurt his brother than anyone, and that’s saying something considering that the world is _littered_ with his victims. _That’s_ how I found the ledgers.”

“With Sandor Clegane’s help?” Oberyn prompted.

“Yes, but he mostly just killed Tywin Lannister’s men so they didn’t find it first.”

“ _Gwyn_ …” Lyarra groaned. “Gods, I was right, I didn’t keep you nearly busy enough.”

“Don’t worry so, darling, mine brother shall no doubt have any _number_ of tasks with which to keep Gwyn occupied in Sunspear.” Oberyn shook his head and leaned forward. “Gwyn, be specific.”

“The Mountain and his Men are _horrible.”_ Gwyn explained in a rush. “They’ve killed whores and pimps and tavern maids by the score. They blackmail all of the poorer shop owners in the Westerlands. They steer clear of the Guild, but if you’re not Guild then you’ve got no protection. Lord Tywin either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what Gregor Clegane done and so he does whatever he wants.”

Lyarra’s distress was rapidly turning to angry disgust beside him as her finely tuned sense of honor became more and more offended.

“The Queen _packed_ the Red Keep with Lannister servants, and they were mostly unwilling to trust me or tattle to me with tales of their mistress save for little bits here and there that anyone could have found out in the kitchens of any castle. Enough of them hated the Mountain, though, to help me hurt _him_ . I told them there was proof in the ledgers that the Mountain had helped steal from the Guild and they helped me with _that_.”

“Yes!” Walda added eagerly. “I didn’t understand… That’s what they were so mad about, then? Who the boy with the sootbucket said killed his mother and the laundry maid hated so?”

“The little drudge who told us that Lord Baelish paid him to run notes to his brothels and back was the son of a whore the Mountain killed and the maid who Littlefinger paid to tell him when the Queen got her courses had been raped by the Tickler.”

“It appears I may have to expand my horizons on who is in need of killing.” Oberyn took careful note of the names.

“You should make a list.” Arya suggested, then perked up. “I can write it down.”

“ _Neatly_ , we’ll begin your calligraphy practice there.”

Arya Stark seemed satisfied with this as a fair punishment and Oberyn leaned forward and gently took Gwyn’s hands in his own. She let out a shaky breath and spoke again.

“Now you know.”

“Now I know.” Oberyn Martell agreed and sat back on his heels before rising. For once, obligingly, his knees didn’t pop loudly at the action. “It seems that the man owes a piece of his death to many sources.”

“Yes, but I’ve come to realize that the Mountain is one small part of a larger evil.”

“What?”

“She means,” Lyarra spoke slowly, looking down at her friend with eyes lit by sudden understanding, “that the monster never should have gotten so far. He’s only so bad because everyone always _allowed_ to be. My father would _never_ tolerate even such a _rumor_ of a bannerman before he went and settled it as the First Men do!”

“Your father, darling, is not Lord Tywin.”

“Just as well, or at least one person in this room would be dead.” Gwyn sighed.

Oberyn turned and looked at her, taking in the pallor of her face and the wrung out way she now rested back against her pillows. Blowing out a deep breath, he nodded and reached down, tugging the blankets up. Then he turned to where a basket packed with clean wool sat. An empty, corked bottle of water sat nestled safely there along with a glazed ceramic cup, and several smaller bottles. Pouring a bit of water into one glass he carefully measured out a dose of a thick, dark brown syrup with a small spoon.

“I find I have no words to thank you for your trust, so care must suffice.” Oberyn put the glass in Gwyn’s hands and steadied them, finding them shaking, as Lyarra helped her friend sit up. “You’ve done more than enough and must rest. You lost a great deal of blood and your body must recover.”

“You _won’t_ do anything stupid?”

“Such faith.” Oberyn lamented.

“I won’t let him.” Lyarra promised instead. “Walda, will you sit with her?”

“Of course.”

“Lady Arya, your punishment awaits.”

“Yes, Prince Oberyn.”

It was surreal, Oberyn thought, that things could just become _normal_ so quickly after such a revelation. Tucked under a pair of beds he had an axe hanging over the neck of his family’s grimmest and most powerful enemies. He’d just learned a Name he’d thirsted for since his wife was no more than a babe, and Elia’s revenge and her poor babe’s was only in want of a plan and action. Surely some storm should have whipped up or gulls cried overhead or a red comet raced across the sky to signify such things?

The seas remained calm as night fell, however. Elia’s justice, and it seemed the justice of many others, would have to wait a little while yet. Oberyn was a father and had a fosterling to attend to, and that meant the mundane task of making Lady Arya sit at a desk and practice her calligraphy. If she was coming up with a list of people to kill for him, well, that was not really so odd given how inventive he’d gotten with some of Obara or Nym’s early writing lessons when both had loathed sitting still in a schoolroom for any reason.

In the end, Oberyn Martell found his journey to get his unasked for bride ending both nothing as he’d expected it to and exactly as he had wanted it. He knew who had killed his sister and her children, and one of those men was dead. As he and Doran had intended, a marriage contract was secured that guaranteed mutual protection against their enemies and aid in war from the North and Dorne. He was not sure precisely how far this would stretch against Stark’s loyalty to his foster-brother, but now at least he knew Stark had seen what the Usurper had become and was wary of it. They could work forward from there.

“You’re quiet.” Lyarra whispered as she sat down beside him on their bed, Oberyn having desired the peace of their cramped cabin over the noise and the wind of the ship’s deck.

“You’re often quiet as well.”

“Yes, but nobody _worries_ when I am quiet.”

Oberyn huffed out a laugh and slipped an arm around her, drawing her against his side as he looked up from his study of the frame scroll on the wall.

“True.” He allowed, and as he looked down at her he was suddenly struck by the soft lines of her face and the way her eyes gleamed with a soft, sad, sort of light. “You’re worried for Gwyn.”

“Yes, but no? I feel I finally _understand_ and I almost wish I didn’t.”

“Innocence is the coin of knowledge and the price is ever steep.”

“Profound.”

“Some maester or the other said it, but I’ve forgotten his name.”

Lyarra’s soft laughter brushed across his collarbone and Oberyn slowly laid down across the bed, feeling as Lyarra tucked herself into his side. Neither of them had removed their boots. Instead their feet stuck off the end of the bed awkwardly.

“What shall we do now, My Prince?”

“We go home, Lyarra.” Oberyn closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the sea. “We go home.”

 

The End.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be continued in the second installment - Heir to the Telling Senses...


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some Notes on Upcoming Fic in the Series...

**Updates for all of my readers and those who have commented...**

 

First of all, let me offer all of you the deepest and most heartfelt of thanks. Your kind words and endless responses have been a joy to read. I'm sorry I haven't been responding to them lately! Several things have been going on, both in Real Life and in my writing process, so let me catch you up on each.

 

**_Real Life_** _..._ I work in a High School in the United States. Starting last month we entered Standardized Testing Season. We lost 5 instruction days to two days of testing and three days of make-up. If you work with students with accommodations as I do that multiplies testing times by double, as the students are allotted more time to get a fair chance at the test. That starts the cascade of makeup work that leaves everyone running to catch up with our students' needs while they get overwhelmed by the stress of the standardized testing cycle. We've got four more weeks of testing sprinkled through the end of April and mid-May to get through as well, not to mention county assessments. During this crunch time I'm often too burned out from the stress to write, as schools are liable for thousands of dollars in fines if they don't follow testing protocols exactly and the testing protocols are fiddly and difficult for teachers to follow. Especially given that we get a single thirty minute training session to prepare us for this task. I'm going to try and build up my old writing momentum again, but work is making it difficult. 

_**The Big Sequel**_ \- Madrigal_in_training is the most patient partner in crime ever. Really. She should get all the cookies on the internet (but not the kind that make your computer run slow or the NSA is spying on us with. ;) That said, I realized my story timeline was totally off if I was going to work in a couple of the awesome ideas she'd helped me brainstorm. That means I have to rewrite an outline that is 20+ pages long and totally redo my timeline and my muses for the story decided not to cooperate. So I've been struggling to get that sorted out. 

On the plus side, there is a  **New Story** being posted right now in the series. It's a short story, with just four chapters. It will follow Theon Greyjoy, Quentyn Martell, Robb Stark, and Domeric Bolton and show us little snapshots of what they've gotten up to in the five-months-and-change that elapse between  ** _Bequeathed from Pale Estates_  **and its sequel  _ **Heir to the Telling Senses**_... which, yes, has a name now. :) 

 

So, in short, I don't know when I'll get  _ **Heir to the Telling Senses**_ posted or what the chapter posting schedule will be for it, but there is a new story in the series and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you, every one of you, for reading and always giving me so much encouragement. It means the world. 

 

_(P.S. clicky on the series button, I posted **Wandering Suns** ' first chapter already...)_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Fluttering Touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14415534) by [OhNoItsMyra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhNoItsMyra/pseuds/OhNoItsMyra)




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